The tree stood for nearly 150 years before the two men carried out what a prosecutor called a “moronic mission” and cut it down in the middle of the night.

The two men were sentenced to more than four years in prison for cutting down the 150-year-old tree. A prosecutor called their act a "moronic mission."

LONDON — With one man holding a phone to record the tree’s notorious fall and the other working a chainsaw, a pair of vandals forever altered the landscape of a beloved section of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. In less than three minutes, the beloved Sycamore Gap tree that had stood nearly 150 years crashed to the ground.