Old Bet

Um, Happy January and all that.

In the absence of proper posts, I would like to share with you a fascinating and rather poignant Wikipedia article, which though I only discovered it today is my very favourite ever. Wikipedia is brilliant.


Old Bet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Old Bet was the second elephant brought to the United States.

Biography
In 1808, while residing in Somers, New York, Hachaliah Bailey purchased an African elephant for $1,000 and named it "Old Bet." Old Bet appears to be one of the first elephants brought to the United States; she had previously been on exhibit in Boston in 1804, but Bailey found her for sale four years later in a New York City cattle market.

(An alternate version of the story relates that Bailey purchased Old Bet from a sea captain, possibly his brother, who had acquired the elephant for $20 in London prior to the War of 1812.)

Bailey originally planned to use Old Bet as a draught animal on his farm, but she attracted so much attention that he decided to found a travelling menagerie instead. He started out to show Old Bet with a wagon of hay, a horse to draw it, and an assistant. The admission fee for an entire family was either a coin or a 2-gallon jug of rum. In 1808, Hachaliah Bailey rented two-thirds of Old Bet to Benjamin Lent and Andrew Brown, who also had a right to display her.

On July 24, 1816, Old Bet was killed while on tour near Alfred, Maine by a farmer who thought it sinful for poor people to waste money on a traveling circus, and Bailey memorialized her in 1825 with a statue and the Elephant Hotel in Somers, New York.


[Incidentally, it occurs to me that the three people I know who I know to edit and/or write Wikipedia articles are all boys – which mayn’t mean much, though I think perhaps a passion for (read: obsession with) factual knowledge and a self-confidence in your own correctness are more often to be found in boys – but more importantly they are some of the smartest, most interesting and generally fantastic people I know: Nathan, Ed, and my little brother. My awesome geeks of Wikipedia, I salute you!]