Saved by Snooze Button
It is not every day that you hear a snooze alarm saving a life, but that is exactly what happened with Raymond Bowling from Austin, Indiana in the USA.
Every day, Raymond sets his alarm at 5:30 AM and waits for the first snooze alarm before preparing for work. He normally doesn’t stay in bed and wait for the snooze alarm to hit.
But one Wednesday morning just a few weeks ago, he did something different. He laid in bed for a few minutes, got up, and saw that he had six minutes left before the snooze alarm would sound. So he went back to bed to get a few more minutes of sleep.
Little did he know that just a few minutes later, a massive tree limb would shoot through his ceiling and into his bathroom – just where he would have been standing if he started preparing for work. Severe storms had broken the tree limb and caused it to fall off seemingly out of nowhere.
Check out what just missed him:
Learn more on the story here.
The Most Expensive Christmas Tree Ever
How much would you spend on your Christmas tree? If your answer is US$11 million, then you might give the world’s most expensive Christmas tree a run for its money.
Valued at a whopping US$11,026,900 when it was put up, this lavish Christmas tree by the Emirates Palace (UAE) in Abu Dhabi broke records in 2010. Today, this tree is still recognised by Guinness World Records as the most expensive Christmas tree decorated.
So what made it so expensive? Although the tree itself was worth a relatively small $10,000, its jewellery and decorations skyrocketed its value to well over the 11-million-dollar mark. Featured jewellery included 181 diamonds and a variety of emeralds, pearls, and other valuable stones.
Big Fashion Brands Get On Board to Conserve More Trees
Tree conservation has long been an important movement around the world, and a recent report shows that fashion brands are now taking notice and getting on board.
Most people don’t know that a lot of commercial clothing actually contains tree material in the form of rayon, a synthetic cellulose fibre that’s often used as a substitute for silk. Producing rayon involves chemically treating tree pulp, and is a process that uses 120 million trees annually, according to a report from the Vancouver-based environmental group Canopy.
VF Corporation – one of the apparel industry’s largest manufacturers – recently announced that they’re moving toward more responsibly sourced materials for their products. This includes eliminating sources that endanger forests or contribute to its destruction.
Saving Parrots by Hollowing Trees
Hollowing trees and saving birds are two things that you don’t often think of going together. But that’s exactly the case with Swift Parrots in Bruny Island in Tasmania.
The critically endangered Swift Parrot only breeds in Tasmania, and the lack of tree hollows in the region has made finding adequate nesting places quite difficult for them. According to arborist and ecologist Grant Harris, most natural tree hollows appear only in large old trees and that natural hollows could take up to 120 years to form.
So what solution did they come up with to help save Swift parrots? They created hollows manually.
A team of thirty-two arborists from the Victorian Tree Industry Organisation carved more than 50 tree hollows in the area, providing more spots for Swift Parrots to nest in. A research team from the Australian National University will monitor the progress of bird nests in the area.
Find out more about the story here.
The Forest Man of India
We’ve all heard news of deforestation and the needless cutting of trees in different parts of the world. Although environmentalists have been fighting these issues for years, it is always inspiring to hear stories of people who made a difference through sheer dedication and commitment.
Such is the case of Jadav Payeng, who is also known as the Forest Man of India. Since 1979, Jadav has been planting trees in a once-barren region of Majuli Island in Northeast India, with the hope of attracting wildlife back to the land and alleviating land erosion in the island. More than 30 years later, he achieved all these goals – and more.
Today, the area he single-handedly developed has grown into a lush forest that is home to all sorts of plants and wildlife. Spanning over 550 hectares, the Molai Forest (named after his nickname) is larger than New York’s Central Park, which is around 340 hectares.
Not bad at all for the work of one man.
Learn more about Jadav’s story here.
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