Counting down to the Helen pic: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . . . . .
I'm sorry to hear this sad news. Tortoises are truly such beautiful creatures.
This is a fascinating story; thanks for posting. But I can't help thinking how awful it would be if humans lived that long.
Poor guy, shell cracked and was wounded underneath. Wonder if he'd still be here if they had JB Welded it back together.
Cop interviewing the injured tortoise: "How did your shell get cracked?"
Tortoise: "I was mugged by a gang of snails."
Cop: "Did you get a good look at them?"
Tortoise: "Not really....it all happened so fast."
I'd like a licence for my new tortoise named Eric, please.
Wow, it is really amazing to think that that tortoise was alive before America was even a country.
This article brought to mind Macaulay's excellent essay on Clive's successor, the corrupt Warren Hastings.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_hastings_1841.html
From the linked source, a taste of Macaulay's window into Empire and India and men:
"....Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton was a German of the name of Imhoff. He called himself a Baron; but he was in distressed circumstances, and was going out to Madras as a portrait-painter, in the hope of picking up some of the pagodas which were then lightly got and as lightly spent by the English in India. The Baron was accompanied by his wife, a native, we have somewhere read, of Archangel. This young woman, who, born under the Arctic circle, was destined to play the part of a Queen under the tropic of Cancer, had an agreeable person, a cultivated mind, and manners in the highest degree engaging. She despised her husband heartily, and, as the story which we have to tell sufficiently proves, not without reason. She was interested by the conversation and flattered by the attentions of Hastings. The situation was indeed perilous. No place is so propitious to the formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman. There are very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long monotony, a sail, a shark, an albatross, a man overboard. Most passengers find some resource in eating twice as many meals as on land. But the great devices for killing the time are quarrelling and flirting. The facilities for both these exciting pursuits are great....."
I recall no mention of turtles, however. ;^)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but carbon dating tells the approximate date of an animal's death, not its birth.
Almost as old as Helen Thomas...
Very upsetting, and, if I may add, an unfortunate reminder of some blind dates I have been on, some of which could well be classified as "carbon dating".
That would make some really big guitar picks.
I saw two of those things mating at the Atlanta Zoo. They acted more like 17-year-olds.
Old age caught up with him and he was just a shell of his former self.