Elizabeth Rochard

Junior high English teacher, ESL specialist, cheer coach, reader, writer, and mother of three... with varying levels of success at each.

[Brandon Yoshizawa @bay_photography]

Have you ever seen a full moon align with 4th of July fireworks? Now you have 🌕🎆

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The US Navy operates a 50,000 acre forest in Indiana whose entire job is keeping one wooden ship from 1797 afloat.

The ship is USS Constitution, still a commissioned warship with an active-duty crew. Cannonballs bounced off her in 1812 because the hull sandwiches a wall of live oak ribs between two layers of white oak planking, nearly 2 feet of solid wood so dense it barely floats. British 18-pounders hit it and dropped into the sea. A sailor yelled "her sides are made of iron" and the nickname stuck.

Here's the problem with owning a 229-year-old wooden ship: you can't buy the parts. Hull planks run up to 40 feet long and 7 inches thick, cut from single white oak trunks. A white oak takes over a century to grow that big. No lumberyard on earth stocks it.

So the Navy grows its own. Constitution Grove at Naval Support Activity Crane holds trees over 100 years old, reserved exclusively for this ship. Foresters there are managing oaks today that will become hull planking in the 2100s. The maintenance plan literally runs on tree time.

Every 20 years or so she enters dry dock and shipwrights swap out rotted timber. After two centuries of this, estimates put original 1797 wood at maybe 10 to 15 percent of the ship. The Navy keeps replacing her plank by plank because Congress mandated her preservation and because she's the only active US warship that has sunk an enemy vessel.

Every other asset in the Navy has a decommission date. This one has a tree farm.

[Alex & Books 📚 @AlexAndBooks_]

You should always be reading 3 books at a time:

A print book for when you’re home.

An audiobook for when you’re commuting.

An ebook on your phone for when you’re waiting.

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”

- René Descartes (1596 - 1650)

[Adele Scalia @AdeleScalia]

My son quoted his uncle in his 6th grade yearbook and it is perfect.

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 The 50 star American flag flying today was designed in 1958 by 17 year old Robert G. Heft as a high school class project.

He got a B-minus on it.

The teacher claimed the design "lacked originality" and jokingly remarked that if Heft didn't like the grade, he should get the flag accepted in Washington.

Heft called his teacher's bluff. He sent his physical prototype to his congressman, Walter Moeller, who forwarded it to the design pool.

Out of more than 1,500 submissions, President Eisenhower picked his design.

His teacher later changed his grade to an A.

Thank you, Robert! The flag is beautiful! 🇺🇸

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

James Garfield could write a sentence in Greek with his left hand while writing the same sentence in Latin with his right.

At the same time.

Before politics, he was a classics professor. Spoke seven languages. Read theology, philosophy, and mathematics for fun.

Four months into his presidency, he was shot.

The smartest man to ever hold the office.

American Exceptionalism 🇺🇸

[Inferam @InferamAI]

The path to success begins with your natural strengths

[Inferam @InferamAI]

Fibonacci patterns found across nature. 🌻

[Inferam @InferamAI]

Benefits of reading books

[Alfredo Flores @AlfredoFlores]

i love punch 🥺

[Juanita Broaddrick @atensnut]

Were you able to read at 900 words/minute. It gets more and more difficult.

I could until the last 20-30 seconds.

[stepfanie tyler @stepfanie]

Happy Birthday to the OG founder ❤️🇺🇸✨🦅

[Ron DeSantis @RonDeSantis]

Today we honor President George Washington and his legacy.

No American was more integral to the nation’s establishment and survival than Washington, and no American has meant more to the nation throughout its history.

Washington led a revolution to establish a republic in which no man was indispensable, a government of “laws, not of men.”

This is ironic because Washington himself was the exception to that rule — he was truly America’s indispensable man, without whom the young republic would have crashed and burned.

First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Toddler Review: This Book Has A Mind-Blowing Twist That You'll Never See Coming. It Will Change You Forever. https://t.co/4y2ZrpF7tO