
A Sixteenth Century Pope Buried His Pet Elephant Under the Vatican - diodorus
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-16th-century-pope-buried-his-pet-elephant-under-the-vatican
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id_ris
Jose Saramago, a Nobel Prize winner for fiction, wrote a brilliant and surreal
book based around this elephant and mahout. I highly recommend it:
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephants-Journey-
Jos%C3%A9-Sarama...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Elephants-Journey-
Jos%C3%A9-Saramago/dp/0547574118)

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provemewrong
I'll add this to my reading list next to Saramago's The Double, the source
material for 2013 film Enemy.

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skimpycompiler
The Double (2013) and Enemy (2013). One starring Eisenberg, one
Gylenahsiadjkl.

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iSnow
>He wasn't such a large elephant (his shoulder reached about four feet tall)

If I am not mistaken, that's 1.3m in the SI world. Isn't that a bit small for
an elephant? That's nearly what a very large dog reaches.

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moonshinefe
Perhaps the elephant was still a juvenile or it had the equivalent of dwarfism
in humans, but for elephants.

Either that, or they bred elephants back then until they became very small not
unlike ponies. Less likely perhaps.

~~~
iSnow
>they bred elephants back then until they became very small not unlike ponies.

Unlikely, considering the images of the elephant with a guy sitting on its
back. Looks like a honest-to-god Indian elephant.

Most likely, the size got lost in translation between whatever measuring
system they had in the 16th century, SI and those measuring units from the
colonies.

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ars
It must have been something to live in an age like that where wonders still
existed. (Yah, yah, I know there were drawbacks as well.)

Today it's just so hard to get excited about things, since anything you want
to see or know is available in an instant.

~~~
moonshinefe
I still feel like there's plenty of wonder in the world if you go to the right
places. Lots of stuff still isn't on the internet.

But that being said, I also sort of agree and feel like the modern world
pacifies me with instant information, I think I'm less adventurous as a
result.

Before: "I need to find out about a specific topic, time to take a walk to the
library! Who knows what real life things might happen along the way."

Now: "Meh, it's a 5 second google search while I'm on the couch."

And so on.

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animal531
Agreed. I could be traveling around the world, or alternatively I can just
load up MapCrunch and look up some random street views (albeit that they
always include a street).

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StudyAnimal
Which is exactly what one should expect from a 16th century pope.

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creshal
Still beaten by his predecessors:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod)

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moonshinefe
amusing read, thanks

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creshal
There's also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_IX)
:

> _Aged approximately 20 at his first election, he is one of the youngest
> popes in history. He is the only man to have been Pope on more than one
> occasion and the only man ever to have sold the papacy._

