The handler found Topsy as docile as a woman being fitted for a shoe. Each time he tapped his cane against her ankle, she lifted her foot and held the pose, allowing him to dip his sponge into a ...

Topsy the elephant was innocent! In a tale that interweaves the electrocution of a gentle giant with the electrification of America and the rise of the big top circus, “Topsy,” by Michael Daly, ...

“Topsy,” which is set mainly in America’s Gilded Age, is a gripping popular history that runs on two tracks. First, it is the story of two entrepreneurial geniuses, P.T. Barnum and Thomas Edison, and ...

In the late 1800s, post-War of Currents America was a place of emerging electricity and circus entertainment. A product of this intersection was Topsy, a captured female elephant from Southeast Asia, ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

Brooklyn-based journalist Michael Daly has recently published “Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-Tailed Elephant, P. T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison” (Atlantic Monthly Press) ...

Read this book and you will never again want to attend a circus or watch a show that features "trained" elephants (or, probably, animals of any kind). In the heartbreaking "Topsy: The Startling Story ...

The elephant in the room, is, well, in this case, the elephant in the room. The room in question is National Statuary Hall, the old House chamber in the U.S. Capitol. The elephant is a dead circus ...

You might just be inspired to swear off circuses forever, said William Kist in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Michael Daly’s heartrending true story about an elephant that paid the ultimate price to feed ...

Teslelephant time! In 1903, Topsy the elephant died of electrocution on Coney Island. Topsy had killed a man, and after being proved to be unmanageable, Topsy was ordered to be executed. Originally ...