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The Nutty Lives of these American Leaders Were Anything But Ordinary

Khalid Elhassan August 25, 2022 38 min

20. Thomas Jefferson’s Nutty Quest for a Giant Moose

Thomas Jefferson went out of his way to prove Count Buffon wrong. History of Yesterday

Thomas Jefferson showed up at Count Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon’s home, ready for a confrontation. The Frenchman diplomatically put off his nutty guest, and delayed the debate for another time. However, halfway through the dinner, somebody mentioned the North American moose. Buffon declared that an animal of such size could not possibly exist in the continent’s poor environment. A furious Jefferson sent a flurry of letters to America, and begged that somebody, anybody, kill the biggest moose they could find, and ship it to him in Paris.

Finally, New Hampshire’s governor sent out hunters in the dead of winter to shoot the biggest moose they could bag. They did, then dragged it back to civilization for two weeks through heavy snow. A taxidermist stuffed it, before it was shipped to France. However, the taxidermist was inept, and the moose arrived in Paris in 1787 as a putrid mess. A triumphant Jefferson immediately sent the fetid carcass to Buffon, with a letter that told him to picture it with more fur and antlers. Unfortunately, Jefferson never got a retraction from Buffon: the Count died before he could publicly disavow his claims.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.