Give It a Whirl

 

Here's another elephant story: Tuffi, a female Asian elephant born in 1946, was part of a publicity stunt gone wrong in West Germany in 1950. Franz Althoff, whose enormous circus bore his name, planned to advertise his show by having his young elephant ride the suspended monorail train in Wuppertal. He invited several journalists and photographers, so the ride would be well-documented. But the motion of the carriage was frightening, as were the push and noise of the crowd. Tuffi reacted, broke through the side of the rail car and fell ten meters into the Wupper River. She wasn’t badly hurt, but several journalists were banged up, and one camera destroyed. Somehow, not a single one of the photographers captured a shot of the fall. Even today, three-quarters of a century later, you can buy postcards with a picture that looks like an elephant falling from the suspended train. But it’s merely a photomontage – one image superimposed on another.