Addwaita

One of the world's oldest creatures, Addwaita, an Aldabran giant toroise, died this week at the estimated age of 250 years. There is some debate about the revered Grandpa's real age. Some may place it at little more than 150+/- years, but I choose to believe he was TWO-HUNDRED-FIFTY. Why? Just because.

Year 0, 1756 - Addwaita hatches. Mozart tours Europe as a six-year-old prodigy

Year 9, 1765 - James Watt invents the steam engine

Year 20, 1776 - America declares independence

Year 33, 1789 - French revolution

Year 43, 1799 - Rosetta stone discovered in Egypt

Year 63, 1819 - Bolivar liberates northern South America from Spain

Year 86, 1842 - Ether used as first anesthetic

Year 103, 1859 - Publication of Darwin's Origin of Species

Year 105, 1861 - U.S. civil war begins

Year 109, 1866 - Alfred Nobel invents dynamite

Year 123, 1879 - Thomas Edison invents the electric light

Year 139, 1895 - X-rays discovered, motion pictures debut in Paris

Year 147, 1903 - Wright brothers fly first aircraft, Ford Motor Co established, first World Series

Year 158, 1914 - World War I begins

Year 173, 1929 - Stock market crash begins the Great Depression

Year 177, 1933 - Hitler becomes German chancellor, international tensions lead to WWII

Year 189, 1945 - First atomic explosion over Hiroshima

Year 192, 1948 - Ghandi assassinated

Year 207, 1963 - Kennedy assassinted

Year 213, 1969 - Humans land on the Moon

Year 230, 1986 - U.S. Challenger shuttle explosion

Year 235, 1991 - South Africa repeals apartheid, Yelstin first elected Russian president

Year 245, 2001 - Terrorists crash planes into New York's World Trade Center

Year 250, 2006 - Addwaita dies. Kingfisher calculates a bristlecone pine in the American Southwest was 4,600 years old when Addwaita was hatched, or 46 centuries old, or approximately 19 Addwaita lifetimes.