Anne Frank Tree Falls Over

The 150-year-old chestnut tree that famously cheered up Anne Frank while she hid in an attic from the Nazis toppled over during a heavy storm in Amsterdam on Monday. Diseased and rotted through the trunk, many believed the chestnut was bound to come down—and city officials labeled it a safety hazard and ordered it felled several years ago. Since 2007, however, a global campaign, with the help of the Netherlands' Trees Institute, has been attempting to save it. The tree, which crashed across gardens, damaged a brick wall and several sheds; the nearby Anne Frank House museum remained untouched. "Someone yelled, 'It's falling. The tree is falling,' and then you heard it go down," Maatje Mostart, a museum spokeswoman, told the Associated Press. "Luckily no one was hurt." Its legacy will never be forgotten, though, written into time via Frank's February 23, 1944, diary entry: "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver."