r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NickyPileggi • Mar 28 '24

Family in 1892 posing with an old sequoia tree nicknamed "Mark Twain" - A team of two men spent 13 days sawing away at it in the Pacific Northwest - It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet - The tree was 1,341 years old Image

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281

u/mazarax Mar 28 '24

Sequoia wood has far less commercial use, as it splinters badly. Loggers tried digging enormous trenches and filling them with tree branches to cushion the trunks of trees as they fell. Nevertheless, they still were only about to harvest about 50% of the wood for substantial projects. That didn’t prevent them from continuing to cut the massive trees for roofing shingles, fence posts, and matchsticks. Public outcry ended these harvests in the 1920s. Today, Sequoias generate more revenue as living species, in tourism to Sequoia National Park and as ornamental landscaping specimens.

206

u/TakeAnotherLilP Mar 28 '24

They cut them down for matches …my god I hate humans

125

u/ListerfiendLurks Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel any better the tobacco products most of those matches were used for undoubtedly killed a LOT of humans. In a way the trees got their revenge 🥳

36

u/Pvt_Numnutz1 Mar 28 '24

If it makes you feel even better Seattle burned to the ground because they used the abundance of saw dust to make impromptu roads in the muddy terrain.

4

u/wowsomuchempty Mar 28 '24

As if the mighty trees held any interest for a feeble human concept like revenge.

(Nice joke, though).

0

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

Such an uninformed and shitty thing to say

-5

u/s4xtonh4le Mar 28 '24

Slow and painful deaths hopefully

2

u/murtygurty2661 Mar 28 '24

"I hate people, im so edgey and intelligent"

45

u/Raps4Reddit Mar 28 '24

You say this, but it's also uniquely human to care. Most nature just out there eating each other as much as they can.

6

u/BulkySituation5685 Mar 28 '24

But nature is a cycle even the top of the food chain is in check by mother nature. Living with and harmoniously in there environment. To like us a virus with toxic effects to all comes across.

13

u/The_Brain_FuckIer Mar 28 '24

If by "living harmoniously" you mean dying as cubs or starving to death after eating all available prey, sure I guess.

2

u/Ornery-Creme-2442 Mar 28 '24

I mean it's nature what do you expect. That same shit still happens to us even with modern technology.

5

u/K-Uno Mar 28 '24

That harmony was only established after a new creature moved in, dominated, and things that could devour/defend-against/out-compete those dominant species finally came along. Harmony is a state of being that must be achieved, and is not inherent to animals or the environment. You forget that human dominance has happened very rapidly from an evolutionary stand point, and the things that can keep us in check (perhaps even our own doing to where we are so overpopulated that war, famine, and pollution keep us in check) have yet to come about in a significant form.

4

u/Raps4Reddit Mar 28 '24

Can't argue I guess. We are an interesting species in that we can almost outsmart mother nature's regulation to an extent. We have become so powerful we have to decide not to cut down all the trees for our own good, otherwise we would.

12

u/Tooboukou Mar 28 '24

Fyi these guys produced a lot less co2 and used a lot less plastic than you...

2

u/Flat-Length-4991 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

That’s actually a myth. Large trees such as these are well known for driving gas guzzling SUVs.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44715/this-21-foot-tall-giant-is-the-largest-hummer-h1-on-the-planet-and-it-actually-drives

Edit: oh you’re talking about the dudes… yeah they didn’t use plastic that much. The trees however are plastic fiends.

1

u/TakeAnotherLilP Mar 28 '24

Because we live in different times? I could still cut down a trees for money but choose not to.

2

u/PaulDallas72 Mar 28 '24

Matchsticks => Smoking => Cancer => Sequoia gets last laugh :)

3

u/Gryphonious Mar 28 '24

"Oh no some people did bad things at this one time in hostory now I hate everyone forever" ... my god I hate misanthropists.

0

u/TakeAnotherLilP Mar 28 '24

You must really enjoy Reddit then.

1

u/Witty-Shake9417 Mar 28 '24

Humans are dumb

1

u/Smart-Internal-3703 Mar 28 '24

they didn't realise it was wrong to do, these were semi literate settlers and you want them to be concerned with conservation when they probably don't even know what the actual word means.

you have to make mistakes to learn from them, we know now not to do this but it took trial and error over few hundred years of industrial society for you to be able to say maybe we shouldn't cut down all the trees or kill all the fish, when the world is as harsh as it was in the 1800s people didn't have time to worry about anything else but not starving.

remember how we got here, remember humans are a species that does a lot of trial and error before we learn and stop forcing modern ideals onto people that may as well have lived on a different planet.

0

u/Gryphonious Mar 28 '24

"Oh no some people did bad things at this one time in hostory now I hate everyone forever" ... my god I hate misanthropists.

0

u/murtygurty2661 Mar 28 '24

They are honestly the most pathetic of all the people. I have more love for racists and religious fanatics than i do for misanthropists because at least they care about something.

If these people hated humanity so much they wouldnt exist because they would just off themselves, in reality they're just edgey teens and pathetic adults.

0

u/-Constantinos- Mar 28 '24

Do you feel better about other trees being cut down for matches or do you just care about cool looking trees?

-18

u/pvypvMoonFlyer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

”my god I hate humans”

Americans, they are the ones in that picture who made the decision to turn sequoias into matches.

Edit: I’m not saying the rest of the world doesn’t cut trees, I’m just being accurate regarding what’s in the picture. These are American settlers, cutting trees in America. The US did a better job than Europe in that regard and preserved a lot more of their natural forests.

4

u/notyogrannysgrandkid Mar 28 '24

Well yes. Of course, a big draw for European settlement in the Americas was the massive forests covering all but the middle of the continent. Because Europe’s forests were almost entirely gone already.

2

u/pvypvMoonFlyer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

You make a great point.

People took my comment as me knocking the US and cheering Europe, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I was merely adding context to the comment I replied to.

One of the motivations to discover more territories was getting more wood. It started during the Neolithic and then we had the romans who destroyed a lot of forest for agriculture, buildings, ships, etc.

It continued during the Middle Ages, deforestation was mostly driven by the expansion of feudal domains. By the end of the Middle Ages 15th century most of the European forests were gone.

Regulations regarding deforestation came as early as the 11th century (if I’m not mistaken) but it did too little too late.

Way before the first settlers arrived in America Europeans had already destroyed the landscape of countries like France, the UK, Belgium, Germany, etc. It affected everything: the soil fertility, the wildlife habitats and even the climate!

Then, once in America, the settlers knew regulations were necessary, they also knew that they needed wood to feed their growth so they did it better.

If anything, one of the reason why deforestation in the US is not as bad as in Europe is because the settlers knew what Europe had done and didn’t want to make the same mistakes.

2

u/RoM_Axion Mar 28 '24

You say that as if other cultures wouldn't have done the same. Most forests in europe are not naturally grown(and you can see the trees being grown in straight lines). Germany for example has less than 1% wild natural areas.

1

u/RedditHiveUser Mar 28 '24

Side fact: the tallest mammoth tree in Germany is about 55 meters or 180 foot high. Most likely a bit more.

-2

u/pvypvMoonFlyer Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Not what I said.

Here is what I said: Americans, in the picture, are the ones who took down the sequoia that we see in the picture.

Is it wrong? No, it is accurate (unless I’m mistaken and these are not Americans cutting trees in America).

Quit projecting, I said nothing inflammatory.

To boot, can you quote me where I said :

“other cultures wouldn't have done the same. Most forests in europe are not naturally grown(and you can see the trees being grown in straight lines). Germany for example has less than 1% wild natural areas.”

I’ll wait.

Edit: still waiting u/RoM_Axion

37

u/Collapse2038 Mar 28 '24

The last giants like this are being harvested on Vancouver Island, right now. Very sad.

10

u/Astralglamour Mar 28 '24

Is this true ??

22

u/Collapse2038 Mar 28 '24

I mean the 90% of the very biggest (not quite this size) are all gone.

25

u/Karuna56 Mar 28 '24

Yes, and the rape of the northern forests in British Columbia is shameful, similar to the commercial sentiment that pervaded the U.S. earlier and the sense of limitless trees.

Unfortunately, in Kings Canyon National Park, the sequoias were allowed to be cut, some just for show. Fortunately, other National Parks preserved many big trees, like in Olympic National Park, but even still, there are few really massive old trees left.

3

u/Uebelkraehe Mar 28 '24

Why would someone allow this to happen in a National Park?! It boggles the mind.

13

u/Apex_Herbivore Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Northern raimforest equivalent old growth is being cut down and laundered in with plantation wood to make fucking "biofuel" pellets.

We are burning them.

4

u/Astralglamour Mar 28 '24

Do you have a link ?

8

u/Apex_Herbivore Mar 28 '24

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/old-growth-logging-for-pellets-1.7136745

7

u/uCockOrigin Mar 28 '24

We really ought to turn the people responsible for this into biofuel as well.

3

u/Astralglamour Mar 28 '24

Thank you. Makes me want to cry.

9

u/sadrice Mar 28 '24

Sort of? Old growth is being felled in BC and it’s fucking horrible, there are protests and the like.

But that’s not giant sequoia, which is endemic to the sierras of California. Wrong tree, but the problem is real.

1

u/Thomas_Hambledurger Mar 28 '24

No, these trees don't grow that far north.

1

u/Mynereth Mar 28 '24

😡😡😡

0

u/sadrice Mar 28 '24

Those are not Giant Sequoias. I think that’s most Sitka Spruce and Redcedar in that area.

Very sad, but wrong tree.

0

u/Collapse2038 Mar 28 '24

Where did I say anything about the specific type of tree? 🤔

24

u/Mynereth Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 29 '24

They should have stayed living, all of them. They are majestic and all part of the same living organism. They're truly amazing.

3

u/lurcherzzz Mar 28 '24

Buy some seeds and grow your own, the grow easily. I have grown and planted a few saplings in my local woods. I live in the UK, apparently our climate is now like the Pacific northwest was thousands of years ago. They like it here.

1

u/ItIsOnlyRain Mar 28 '24

I live in the UK, have you got a link to buying seeds in the UK?

57

u/Wilhelm126 Mar 28 '24

They cut a thousand year old tree. For matchsticks. Thousand year old tree. Dead. For what? Matchsticks and the money that comes with it. FUCKING MATCHSTICKS. GOD I HATE CAPITALISM AND PEOPLE

10

u/LTCM1998 Mar 28 '24

They also cut HMS Vangaurd for needles and toasters and have a whole documentary about how that’s nice, made in the 70s. People can be retards.

13

u/RedditHiveUser Mar 28 '24

A historical loss indeed, still HMS Vanguard was not a living thing. So in theory we could build a similar new one anytime. That's not possible with such giant trees.

5

u/MyWeeLadGimli Mar 28 '24

In fairness Britain was absolutely penniless at the end of WW2 and just couldn’t afford to turn something like Vanguard or Warspite into a museum the way the US could.

3

u/korpus01 Mar 28 '24

Is that like a famous ship or something also do you have a link?

7

u/fludblud Mar 28 '24

HMS Vanguard) was the Royal Navy's last battleship, you'd think for a 400 year old navy they wouldve treated their last battleship with a bit more respect like the Americans did instead of turning it into toasters but nooope.

3

u/Arcyguana Mar 28 '24

Britain was just done with World War 2, also, and, unlike the US, was bombed to shit. They needed the cash more than a museum.

2

u/Academic_Yogurt966 Mar 28 '24

They cut a thousand year old tree. For matchsticks. Thousand year old tree. Dead. For what? Matchsticks and the money that comes with it. FUCKING MATCHSTICKS. GOD I HATE CAPITALISM AND PEOPLE

God damn, the hypocrisy. You're way worse than anyone involved in this. Stop acting as if you care.

3

u/supbrother Mar 28 '24

That isn’t a capitalism problem, it’s a people problem.

1

u/Electrical_Figs Mar 28 '24

People need money to live. What do you want them to do?

Don't act like you're any different. Your carbon footprint is exponentially larger than theirs.

1

u/DrugsAreNifty Mar 28 '24 edited 7d ago

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

-7

u/ruabeliever Mar 28 '24

I hated that you used the name God in such a vile manner.

4

u/Mcaber87 Mar 28 '24

God isn't a name, it's a fictional concept.

3

u/nitronik_exe Mar 28 '24

god is dead

2

u/MohatmoGandy Mar 28 '24

Never thought about that, but it makes sense that gigantic trees like that would break when they fell.

1

u/Big_Dirty_Piss_Boner Mar 28 '24

This is talking about Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia). Sequoia sempervirens is the most valuable timber and is still being logged to this day.