Tuffi

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Tuffi was a female circus elephant. On 21 July 1950 the circus director Franz Althoff had Tuffi, then 3 years old, take the Schwebebahn (a suspended monorail) in Wuppertal, Germany, as a marketing gag. The elephant apparently did not enjoy the ride, trumpeted wildly and ran through the wagon, broke through a window and fell some 5 meters down into the Wupper river, suffering only minor injuries. A panic had broken out in the wagon and some passengers were injured. Althoff helped the elephant out of the water. Both the circus director and the official who had allowed the ride were fined.

To this day, the location of the incident, between the stations Alter Markt and Adlerbrücke in Wuppertal, is marked with a painted elephant on a house wall.

Tuffi was sold to Cirque Alexis Gruß in 1968; she died there in 1989.

In 1970 Marguerita Eckel and Ernst-Andreas Ziegler published a Children's picture book about the incident, named Tuffi und die Schwebebahn.