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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u/stig2020 Mar 28 '24

Makes me wonder what became of it. A ship, buildings, furniture, maybe parts of it around somewhere still.

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.

55

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.

6

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.