THE BALLOON MAN

The Somerville News Historical Fact of the Week – October 31
October 31, 2012, in Latest News, by The News Staff
By Bob (Monty) Doherty

 

 

Tufts University was founded in 1852, and its campus bridges the cities of both Medford and Somerville. Almost all of the original professors, as well as the university’s largest land donor and namesake, Mr. Charles Tufts, resided in Somerville.

Throughout their campus, you can find memorabilia in honor of the greatest animal attraction in U.S. History.  P.T. Barnum’s six and a half ton elephant was so popular that his very name was transformed into an adjective referring to anything thought of as larger than large. You may not realize it, but jumbo eggs, jumbo shrimp, jumbo jets, jumbo mortgage rates etc. are all referred to as such because of the namesake of a tremendously large and extremely loveable elephant.

In the French Sudan in the year 1861, the soon-to-be world-renowned Jumbo the elephant came into the world not so larger than life. At one point, the Paris Zoo sold this beautiful African Bush elephant to the London Zoo because he was so small and slow to grow. When the famous circus owner, P.T. Barnum, a Tufts University Trustee, came across him 17 years later after he had grown to full size, he purchased him immediately.
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