Da xiong mao, the Chinese name for the giant panda means "great bear cat". Chinese books, written over 3,000 years ago, talk of the giant panda. Even then, it was believed to be endowed with mystical powers capable of warding off natural disasters and evil spirits. The scientific name for giant pandas, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, simply means black and white bear.

1869 The first Westerner to describe a giant panda was probably French missionary and naturalist Père Armand David, who wrote of a "fine skin of the famous white and black bear" in his journal.

1916 German zoologist Hugo Weigold is credited as the first Westerner to see a live giant panda–a cub he bought while part of the Stoetzner Expedition to China and Tibet (the cub died shortly afterward).

1920s The Chicago Field Museum funded an expedition to China led by Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (sons of President Theodore Roosevelt). The wild giant panda they shot was among the first specimen exhibited in the U.S.

1934 William Harkness, an adventurer, set off to China to capture giant pandas. Although he died within a year, in 1936 his wife Ruth (a New York fashion designer) and her party found Su-Lin, a three-pound giant panda cub, in the wild and brought her to the United States. Su-Lin found a home at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, where she won the hearts of an adoring American public.

1939 The Brookfield Zoo acquired its third giant panda, Mei-Lan.

1939 The St. Louis Zoo joined the select list of U.S. zoos with giant pandas when they brought Happy and Pao-Pei to the Midwest.

1941 Pan Dee and Pan Dah were donated to the Bronx Zoo by Madame Chaing Kai-shek in gratitude for relief aid. They died in 1945 and 1951.