BANGKOK: Elephants are Thailand’s national animal, so it’s only natural that King Mongkut in 1861 offered to send a pair to the United States as a gift of a friendship that has endured 200 years.
President Abraham Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America’s then-raging Civil War, politely declined, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals.
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