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Old Billy was the oldest horse that ever lived, and this is his skull – he lived to be 62! He was born in 1760, and worked pulling barges along the river and lifting goods out of boats for the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company in Warrington.
After working for many years, he lived in fields at the side of the River Mersey, where he was a local celebrity for his old age. He had his picture painted by the artist Charles Towne in 1822, only a few months before he died, and a picture book was made about him in 2023, 200 years after his death.
The front teeth can help tell the age of a horse, and the more they meet on a slope, the older the horse is likely to be.
Could you tell us about the oldest person, animal, or tree you know?
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23 Sep, 2023
The oldest tree in Europe is a 1,235-year-old oricate pine (Pinus heldreichii).
This majestic tree is located in Calabria, a region in southern Italy, and measures more than 10 meters in height and 160 centimetres in diameter.
This tree was named Italus after the legendary king of the Oenotrians, an ancient civilisation of Italic origin who originally inhabited Calabria.
In his Fabularum Liber, Gaius Julius Hyginus recorded the myth that Italus was a son of Penelope and Telegonus (a son of Odysseus).
Moreover, According to Aristotle in his Politics, Italy owes its name to this legendary king.
Carmelo Pizzuti, an official of the national park where the Italus tree is located reports that:
“When the ancient Greeks arrived on our shores, they knew that there was already an Enotrian people, their king was Italus. We can say that, in a sense, Calabria was the first Italy, and on this basis, we chose the name for the oldest tree in the park.”