These trees suffer their untimely ends at the hands of celebrities , drunk drivers , and graduate students .
1. Mr. T’s Chainsaw Massacre
In 1987 , Mr. T bought a Tudor mansion in the refined Chicago suburb of Lake Forest . TheA - Teamstar then grabbed a chainsaw and — citing sniffles — begin felling more than 100 oak , elms , and maples on his place . Soon his estate “ looked as if it had been ravaged by an army of beavers , ” theChicago Tribunereported . Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree - loving locals were so appalled , they dubbed it the “ Lake Forest Chainsaw Massacre . ” It was n’t the first time Mr. T had impart his inner Paul Bunyan . A decade in the first place , while in the army , his platoon sergeant penalise him with the chore of chopping down trees . Mr. T axed 70 in under four minute .
2. L’Arbre du Ténéré
It ’s tough being the world ’s loneliest tree . Rooted in the Sahara , the Tree of Ténéré was hem in by a sea of George Sand — its closelipped Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree neighbor lived 250 miles away ! The acacia was a veritable pit stop for travelers , who poetically view it as a testament to nature ’s will to go . After all , it had outlast desertification , thriving despite temperatures over 110 ° farad , and stretching its roots more than 100 feet to find weewee . Nothing , it seemed , could stop it . At least until 1973 , when an allegedly drunk driver somehow managed to run it over . Today it ’s inter in a mausoleum at the National Museum of Niger .
3. The Death of Prometheus
As a graduate student , Donald Currey took essence sample of trees to study climate modification . While explore eastern Nevada in 1964 , he blob a short , gnarled bristlecone pine tree and began drill a core . When the scrap broke off inside the tree , he ask a park ranger for help , and the two settle to issue the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree down . Currey assume a slab of the tree back to his lab , where he counted the rings and puff . The sample was 4844 years honest-to-goodness ! He had not only vote out the man ’s oldest eff tree diagram — he had killed the oldest living single being on the planet . On a positive bank note , another bristlecone true pine called Methuselah is creeping up in age to Prometheus . It ’s some 4800 year quondam .
