Garrett Morton

The United States of America. The Tennessee Vols. Coca Cola. Sometimes war.

[Para @Para919]

500 years ago today, Beretta was founded.

[Sterling Snow @sterlingmsnow]

I reread this every year.

I cry like a baby every year.

Todd Beamer died a father, husband, and hero.

Todd: Hello… Operator… listen to me. I can’t speak very loud. This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco. Our plane has been hijacked.

Lisa: I understand. Can they see you?

Todd: No. There are three that we know of. They have knives — razor knives, like box cutters. Someone announced from the cockpit there was a bomb. It sounded fake.

Lisa: Your name?Todd: Todd Beamer. United Flight 93.Todd: They killed one passenger in first class. They forced most of us back. Fourteen of us here. Five flight attendants. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor.

Lisa: Are you okay?

Todd: We’re going down… wait. No. We’re leveling off. We changed directions. We’re flying east again.

Todd: A guy named Jeremy called his wife. She told him two planes hit the World Trade Center. Lisa, is that true?

Lisa: I have to tell you the truth. It’s very bad. Both towers are gone. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Our country is under attack. I’m afraid your plane may be part of their plan.

Todd: Oh God. Lisa, will you do something for me? Call my wife and my kids. Promise me you’ll call.

Lisa: I promise.

Todd: Our home number is… You have the same name as my wife. Lisa. We’ve been married ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her I love her. I’ll always love her. We have two boys — David, he’s 3, and Andrew, he’s 1. Tell them their daddy loves them and he is so proud of them. The baby is due January 12th. I saw an ultrasound. We still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy.

Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.)

Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol.

Todd: I understand. I’ll be back.

Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot.

Lisa: What are you going to do?

Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out.

Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.

[Risky Chrisky @RiskyChrisky]

Command Post to Ladder 3: "Command Post to Ladder 3, get out of the building!"

Captain Paddy Brown responded: "This is the officer of Ladder Co. 3. I refuse the order! I am on the 44th floor and we have too many burned people with me. I'm not leaving them!"

[2001 Live @25YearsAgoLive]

Firefighters at the World Trade Center site raise an American flag over the rubble for the first time.

Photographer Thomas E. Franklin captures the dramatic moment.

[U.S. Army @USArmy]

Even before the 9/11 attacks, Col. Richard "Rick" Rescorla was a decorated war hero with a Silver Star from his actions in Vietnam.

25 years ago today, Rescorla saved 2,687 people and paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Here’s how it happened. 🧵

[Garrett Morton @Nice_Marmot96]

Never forget. 🇺🇸

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Twenty five years ago today, a 62 year old man with cancer in his bones walked 2,687 people out of the South Tower, and then he went back inside.

Rick Rescorla was born in Hayle, Cornwall in 1939. British Parachute Regiment in Cyprus at 18. Colonial police in Northern Rhodesia. Then he came to America, enlisted in the US Army in 1963, and in November 1965 he went into the Ia Drang Valley as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.

Hal Moore called him the best platoon leader he ever saw. His men called him Hard Core. He sang to them in the dark, Wild Colonial Boy in an Australian accent, because he had worked out that men who are singing are not men who are panicking. That is Rescorla on the cover of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, bayonet fixed.

Thirty five years later he was head of security for Dean Witter, later Morgan Stanley, in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

In 1990 he brought in his old friend Dan Hill and the two of them walked the basement. He warned the Port Authority that the parking garage was wide open, that somebody could drive in a truck full of explosives, walk out and light it off. Nothing was done. Three years later the 1993 bomb went off about thirty feet from the spot he had flagged.

After that he told Morgan Stanley the towers were still a target and the next attack would come out of the sky. He wanted the firm to leave Manhattan. The lease ran to 2006, so they stayed. Twenty two floors of the South Tower, roughly 2,700 people.

So he drilled them. Every three months, everyone, no exceptions, down the stairwells two abreast while he stood there with a stopwatch. Traders pulling seven figures resented being marched down concrete stairs by a Cornishman with a clipboard. He kept doing it anyway.

8:46 a.m. The North Tower is hit. Port Authority comes over the South Tower loudspeakers and tells everyone the building is secure and to go back to their desks. Rescorla picks up a bullhorn and tells his people to get out.

He phones Dan Hill. "The dumb sons of bitches told me not to evacuate. They said it's just Building One. I told them I'm getting my people out of here."

9:03 a.m. The second plane hits the South Tower, floors 77 through 85. His people are already in the stairwells, moving exactly the way they had been drilled, and Rescorla is on the bullhorn singing to them. Cornish songs. A version of Men of Harlech he had rewritten for Cornwall. Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, can't you see their spearpoints gleaming.

He called his wife Susan from the stairs. They had been married two and a half years, met jogging in New Jersey. He told her to stop crying, that he had to get these people out safely, and that if something happened to him he wanted her to know he had never been happier, that she made his life.

Someone told him to get out. He said, as soon as I make sure everyone else is out.

2,687 Morgan Stanley employees went home that day. Thirteen did not, and four of those were Rescorla and the men who stayed in the building with him: Wesley Mercer, Jorge Velazquez, Godwin Forde.

He was last seen on the 10th floor, walking up.

The South Tower fell at 9:59. They never found him.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

So long, America🫡🇺🇸

49 days ago we landed in the USA to follow our country at the World Cup. We had no idea it would turn into the trip of a lifetime.

Thank you to everyone who followed along, and to all the people we met who made this journey even more special. We honestly don’t have the words to express how grateful we are for everything you did for us.

This trip exceeded every expectation we had. We came here with an open mind, wanting to experience as much of the country as possible. I still remember telling my friends on the flight to Atlanta that I hoped we’d get to meet a few locals on this trip. Now we’re flying home with friends all across the USA.

Before we came, we heard so many stereotypes and warnings about America. People told us about safety concerns, that they might check our social media at the border, and all kinds of other things. None of it matched our experience. This was probably the most welcoming country we’ve ever visited.

So if you have the chance to travel, do it. The world isn’t nearly as bad as the media often makes it seem. 99% of people are awesome!

I heard this quote somewhere during the World Cup, and I think it sums up our experience perfectly:

“If you want to hate the world, watch the news. If you want to love it, travel it.”

Thank you, America ❤️🇺🇸

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

Tennessee❤️

When people told us at the beginning of our road trip that people in the South are different, we didn’t really know what they meant. But after spending several weeks here, we finally understand.

The hospitality here is just something else. Everyone knows everyone, and it feels like people are living one big shared life. Someone is always stopping by, doors are always open, and everyone is welcome.

One guy told us he hasn’t locked his house in 23 years. When we were out on the lake, we met some people who immediately invited us to their lake house to hang out. They offered us drinks, chicken wings, and made us feel completely at home. It’s a kind of hospitality I’ve never experienced before.

When we got back to the dock late that night, one of the guys on the boat said something that really stuck with me:

“You don’t have to live in some big, exciting city. What matters is the people who live there. That’s what makes you happy. I’ve lived in many places around the world, but nothing comes close to Ocoee, Tennessee. And you know the best part about living here? We’re going to do the exact same thing again tomorrow.”

We will be back.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

On our way into the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina!!!

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 James Longstreet’s wife, Helen Dortch Longstreet, helped build B-29 Superfortresses in WWII as a Rosy the Riveter.

She was 80 years old.

And she never missed a day of work.

LIFE Magazine actually photographed her. This is one of their photos.

Her husband was the commander who oversaw Pickett’s Charge. She helped build the type of machine that dropped the first atomic bomb.

Wild.

[Earth @earthcurated]

Meet the Kea, the world's only alpine parrot.

[weird medieval guys NEW BOOK OUT NOVEMBER 5!!! @WeirdMedieval]

you fools….where do you think they’re rowing to…..?

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

This is so insane😭😭😭

[Sly 🔎 @ykslyy]

"Go tell your King what you saw here today...”

[🇺🇸 The American Culturist 🇺🇸 @MericaCulture]

On this day in 1796, Tennessee was admitted as the 16th state!

Famous Americans who called the "Volunteer State" home included Presidents Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson as well pioneers Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Sam Houston.

God Bless Tennessee!

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

He's watching you American, make him proud

[Garrett Morton @Nice_Marmot96]

@TimothyEveland Is everyone just ignoring the pistol-knife in his hand?

[Memory Medieval @MemoryMedieval]

Listening to Don Edwards feeling like there has to be a medieval
version of "Coyotes"

[Memory Medieval @MemoryMedieval]

"Now the Templars are gone..
And the Troubadours are gone..
The Hospitallers are gone..
And the brigands are gone..

Duke Godfrey is gone..
William Iron Arm is gone..
And the Lionheart is gone..
And the Red Knight is gone.."