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- Margie the Elephant was born in Asia. She was an Indian Elephant known for appearances in The Boy Who Stole the Elephant (1970) and several T.V. shows including The Cisco Kid (1954 - 1956) and Lassie (1960) and Mr. Ed (1962). She died on June 10, 1979 in New Mexico, USA.
- Topsy was originally a wild elephant, born in Southeast Asia c. 1875. She was captured by elephant traders while still a baby and smuggled into the United States by 1877 . Her new owner Adam Forepaugh (1831-1890) claimed that she was born in captivity and advertised her as the first American-born baby elephant. Forepaugh was the owner of Forepaugh Circus, one of the two largest circuses in the country. The other was Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Topsy served most of her life as a circus elephant, performing at various incarnations of the Forepaugh Circus from 1877 to 1902. She gained a bad reputation for allegedly injuring and killing circus workers. Sensational news reports claimed that she had killed 12 men, though a 21st-century finds these reports unreliable. There are reports that she injured one of two workers c. 1900, but not that she actually killed them.
Her notoriety as a "killer elephant" was solidified in 1902, when she killed a spectator by the name of James Fielding Blount. Blount reportedly had been teasing the circus elephants, and throwing sand at Topsy's face. When he burnt the sensitive tip of her trunk with a lit cigar, Topsy grew angry and retaliated. She killed the man easily, although there are contradictory reports on the exact manner of his death.
The death of Blount generated much publicity. The Circus benefited for a time, when crowds of spectators kept arriving to see the "killer elephant". All went well for about a month, until a spectator by the name of Louis Dodero decided to tease the elephant himself. Dodero supposedly used a stick to tickle Topsy behind the ear. She used her trunk to seize him around the waist and then threw him to the ground. Dodero was apparently injured but not killed. The ongoing publicity turned negative and threatened the reputation of the Circus, and its owners decided to sell her.
In Summer 1902, Topsy was sold from the Circus to the Sea Lion Park, a Coney Island amusement park. Its owner was Paul Boyton (1848-1924), a showman best remembered as the inventor (or popularizer) of the immersion suit. The amusement park was famous for its aquatic circus and sea lions, but Boyton was seeking out additional attractions to face the competition. Topsy's animal handler from the circus, William "Whitey" Alt, was hired by Boyton to keep charge of Topsy.
Later that year, Paul Boyton leased the amusement park to aspiring businessmen Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy. The new owners started expanding the park, remodeling it, and renamed it to Luna Park. It continued using the name until destroyed by a fire. Taking advantage of Topsy's notoriety, the new owners had her working hard and transporting cargo and a new airship. The media broadcast her work, presenting as Topsy doing "penance" for her bad behavior.
Topsy was however soon involved in negative publicity again, mostly due to the erratic behavior of her handler William "Whitey" Alt . In October, 1902, Alt was arrested by the police for setting Topsy loose in the streets of New York City. In December, a drunk Alt used Topsy to attack a local police station and to scare away the police officers. His employers fired him, but there was the problem of what to do with Topsy.
The Luna Park tried to get rid of the problematic elephant, originally by trying to sell Topsy to someone else. No circus or zoo was interested in buying an elephant notorious for bad behavior. So the owners announced to the press that they would euthanize Topsy by electrocution. The initial plan was to publicize the event and sell admission tickets. A protest by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals resulted in the decision to avoid turning the death to a public spectacle. But the Society still allowed the plans for execution to continue, just demanding that the death should not be inhumane.
Uncertain whether electrocution would be enough to kill Topsy, the planners of the death added two additional ways to kill her. She would also be poisoned by ingesting poisoned food and strangulated by a machine. The execution was set for January 4, 1903, and initially attended by 1500 spectators and 100 press photographers. Only about 100 people were allowed to witness the death itself.
The execution had to be delayed by more than a hour. A new animal handler called Carl Goliath was supposed to lead Topsy over a bridge and towards the execution devices. But Topsy refused to cross the bridge and Goliath could not convince her to move at all. The planners offered 25 dollars to her former handler William "Whitey" Alt to help coax Topsy to the execution place. He refused to help kill the elephant in any way. Deciding to kill Topsy where she stood, the planners had to dismantle the execution devices and bring them to Topsy.
Topsy was first fed 460 grams of potassium cyanide in order to poison her. Then electrocuted with 6,600 volts for about 10 seconds. She fell to the ground following the electrocution, but the owners were not sure that she was dead. They uses a steam-powered winch to strangulate her for 10 minutes. A post-mortem examination of her corpse determined that the 10-second electrocution had already killed her. The winch was not needed at all. The poor innocent soul falsely thought to be a killer was dead. - Actor
- Director
Dimitris Nikolaidis was born in 1922 in Asia Minor, Turkey. He was an actor and director, known for My Wife Went Crazy (1966), Jack of All Trades, Master of None (1963) and The Grouch (1969). He was married to Souli Sabah. He died on 21 January 1993 in Athens, Greece.- Writer
- Additional Crew
Cassius Dio was a Greek historian and Roman official. He was the son of Cassius Apronianus, governor of Cilicia and Dalmatia, and may have been a descendant of the Greek orator and philosopher Dio Chrysostom. Dio Cassius came to Rome at the age of 16, in the early years of the reign of Commodus (180-192 AD), under whom he subsequently became a member of the Roman Senate. During the brief principate of Pertinax (193) he was nominated to a praetorship, which he held in the following year after the accession of Septimius Severus. In 205 he served as consul, and during the reign of Severus Alexander (222-35) was appointed successively to the governorships of Africa, Dalmatia, and Upper Pannonia. In 229 he became consul again, as the colleague of the emperor himself. However, he did not spend his year of office in Rome, since the unpopularity of his strict discipline with the soldiers and praetorian guardsmen prompted the emperor to suggest that he should absent himself from the city. Leaving the public service, Dio withdrew to his native Bithynia, where he apparently remained. He wrote, in Greek, a Roman history in 80 books (of which 26 survive), covering the period from the founding of the city to AD 229, including the only surviving account of the invasion of Britain by Claudius 43 BC. Dio's history took him 10 years to prepare and 12 more to write. The principal value of the work lies in the period from A.D. 180 onward, during which time Dio's own official career enabled him, as an importantly placed eyewitness, to collect firsthand information. Dio also wrote a biography of Arrian, and an account of the dreams and portents of Septimius Severus, but both these works are lost.- David J. Brewer was born on 20 June 1837 in Smyrna, Asia Minor, Ottoman Empire [now Izmir, Turkey]. He was married to Louise R. Landon and Emma Minor Mott. He died on 28 March 1910 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.