9/11 - 22 years since it happened

[MasterSpenny]

I know I am slightly late, but this proves time flies so quickly - it’s been 22 years today since the world changed forever with the terrorist attacks in New York (what became known as 9/11)

President Biden currently delivering remarks - this is also on YouTube from American news channels (and will add links to some other videos if I see them)

President Biden delivers remarks commemorating 9/11 in Anchorage, AK

President Biden delivers remarks commemorating 9/11 in Anchorage, AK. #FoxNewsSubscribe to Fox News! https://bit.ly/2vaBUvASWatch more Fox News Video: http:/...

www.youtube.com

President Biden delivers remarks commemorating 9/11 in Anchorage, AK. #FoxNews

Context September 11 attacks, also called 9/11 attacks, series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history. The attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C., caused extensive death and destruction and triggered an

 

[brad465]

On last year's anniversary I remember a particular comment that went something like this: "Remember, we didn't track down Bin Laden because he flew a plane into a building, but because he got his followers to do so."

It's also the 50th anniversary of "the other 9/11", which refers to the 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile, backed by the US and allies to install the right wing dictatorship in Chile for the next 17 years.

 

[VauxhallandI]

I’m in NYC now, planning to pop down to the area to see the memorial lights

 

[baz962]

I had been up one of the towers and had lunch up there in the January that year and I always remember where I was and thinking of the young people who worked in the restaurant. Visited ground zero three years after.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Here's the site on 8th September 2002, just under a year after the attack.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

It's also the 50th anniversary of "the other 9/11", which refers to the 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile, backed by the US and allies to install the right wing dictatorship in Chile for the next 17 years.

Whenever this day comes around and people are using the American (and therefore wrong) date format, I think of the fall of the Berlin Wall which began on the 9th November 1989.

 

[VauxhallandI]

This evening

 

[antharro]

Thanks for posting these pics, @VauxhallandI . I visited a few years back and it's a very poignant experience.

 

[PTR 444]

Whenever this day comes around and people are using the American (and therefore wrong) date format, I think of the fall of the Berlin Wall which began on the 9th November 1989.

Also the date in which Donald Trump won the 2016 US Presidential Election. Think there was a meme around at the time that went like this:

Worst day in American history - 9/11
Second worst day in American history - 11/9

 

[westv]

I was reminded of this when I saw the updated "102 Minutes that Changed America" on TV last night.
I also remember watching the news reports in my office in London on the day. What has also given it more resonance for me is that my previous company (who I worked at for just over a year) lost everybody who was in work at the WTC that day. Almost 370 staff and contractors. They were just doing what I was doing, going to the office for a days work but they never came home.

 

[edwin_m]

Working in a tower near Euston with a southward view. Wondering if any of the planes descending towards Heathrow was lower than usual, until they changed the flightpaths.

 

[nlogax]

An insane day..well, week as the aftermath continues to remain in my memory as well as day itself.

I had work reasons to be in NYC just two days later to investigate some IT issues indirectly related to the fallout. Took the Northeast Regional up from Philadelphia 30th St, the pall of smoke over ground zero was visible from the train many miles away south of Elizabeth. Fair to say that all of us in the train carriage carried the same sense of disbelief at what we were seeing through the windows. I surfaced into the evening sun at Penn Station, missing people photos and flyers plastered on every wall, all of them being scanned by quiet crowds of people. Walking to my hotel a few blocks west was just eerie.. the streets were weirdly quiet other than the occasional emergency vehicle speeding south, and there was the strangest smell in the air. More than 'just smoke'. Could never put my finger on it but it's not something I'd ever want to experience again in my lifetime.

The original towers are still missed. I'd been up to the observation deck on the south tower more than a few times up until that point and was supposed to take a friend from London there at the end of that same week.. naturally he couldn't make it across with the ensuing flight situation. Another friend and I went there about six weeks after the attacks. The smoke had gone but the rubble was visible for all to see beyond the barriers, particularly the surreal sight of those recognisable tower remnants still standing storeys tall.

If anyone has the opportunity while in town then get to the 9/11 museum. One of the most emotionally affecting exhibitions it's possible to see.

 

[Sorcerer]

Though I have no personal connection to 9/11, there was one story that I heard this year that I think demonstrates the true resilience and determination that the will to live can give us humans. The story is about one man who worked in the North Tower (the first one struck at 8:46 local time) and made a very valiant effort to try and climb down the outside of the tower itself. Now bear in mind, the space between the exterior columns was small and had no proper area to hold on to which would've made for a very awkward grip. Despite that, the man was spotted trying to climb down at around 9:40 and apparently made it a considerable distance of at least 20 floors down. Unfortunately, said person was not seen again after the collapse of the nearby South Tower at 9:59, which lead some to believe that the energy of the collapse swayed it's twin building and made him lose his grip. But despite that, I think it really does demonstrate just how far the will to live can take us, because this mysterious man even in a moment of hopelessness never gave up, but ever so tragically, it never paid off for him.

 

[Strathclyder]

Even though I was only 5 years old then, in a different country and with no direct/personal connection to 9/11, virtually every aspect of it is seared into my psyche: how clear and how blue the sky was on the Eastern Seaboard that day, the videos/photos of the Twins getting hit (the Naudet video of Flight 11 is particularly chilling on so many levels), the towers burning, the horrific choice facing those trapped above the impact zones of both towers (particularly the North Tower), the terror and uncertainty the passengers/crew of all 4 hijacked airliners felt (Flight 93's passengers are among my heroes for fighting back once they found out what was happening at the cost of their own lives), the stoic heroism of the emergency responders to the WTC despite how utterly hopeless their situation was (RIP the 343), the pictures/videos of both collapses (the sounds of which will stay with me until the day I die) and the ensuing tsunami of toxic dust and debris smothering Lower Manhattan, planting the seeds of horrendous illnesses in so many survivors and recovery workers at Ground Zero. Even 22 years later, the sheer enormity of it is still hard to fully comprehend. The absolute worst and best of humanity was on full display that day.

If anyone has the opportunity while in town then get to the 9/11 museum. One of the most emotionally affecting exhibitions it's possible to see.

Of course it depends on the induvidial, but personally, a visit to the 9/11 museum and memorial is best done in stages over a few days, so as not to be emotionally overwhelmed. I'd do something similar if I were to visit Auschwitz or the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

For those of us who were alive and old enough at the time, it was such a big world-changing event that we all remember where we were when we heard- much like the JFK assassination was for my dad's generation. I was 19 and a few days off leaving home for University so I'd been at a house party in Halifax the night before. I'd driven back to my home that day with my then-girlfriend, arriving not long after the first plane hit. As we'd had a tape on in the car rather than the radio, we were both oblivious until my mum opened the door to greet us saying "have you heard what's just happened? A plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre!" My mum had the BBC News channel on, and the breaking news was showing smoke pouring out of the first tower. At that point we all assumed it was some sort of tragic accident... when the second plane hit, I somehow convinced myself it was some sort of elaborate Max Headroom style prank. The idea of such a thing being planned on purpose was simply outlandish.

 

[Strathclyder]

At that point we all assumed it was some sort of tragic accident... when the second plane hit, I somehow convinced myself it was some sort of elaborate Max Headroom style prank. The idea of such a thing being planned on purpose was simply outlandish.

That was the prevailing thought of so many State-side and particularly in New York between 8:46am and 9:03am, that the first plane was, somehow, just a tragic accident. Flight 175 slamming into the South Tower immediately and thoroughly shattered any notion that it was anything other than a deliberate act. Watching raw copies/live broadcasts of the event as covered by the major and local TV networks, you can actually hear the shocked gasps by the anchors and people in the studio when the second plane hits.

 

[185143]

I've been to the 9/11 museum when I was younger with my parents. Hearing a tour guide telling a group about the firefighter casualties, and ending that particular matter so calmly with "and this is Firefighter [name]. He was my Son." Is something I'm unlikely to ever forget. I was only 7, but could still take in the atrocity of it.

Similarly at Auschwitz, one of the most striking things about that experience really was seeing groups of young Jewish children, a similar age to me at the time (about 13 or so) walking round with Israel flags, visibly upset. It's hard to explain unless you've seen it. It's shocking seeing everything, but that just made it seem so much more "real". The silence and calm alone of Auschwitz is chilling enough before you thing of the crimes committed there. Ground Zero isn't the same in that respect, understandably, due to where it is.

 

[Snow1964]

I went to New York few years ago, and the square infinity pools were hard to reflect at as so many people standing around. We then moved through the then new Occulus (which at the time was dazzling white as many of the shops hadn't opened and still had hoardings).

Never got the feeling of loss in NY, but the one place that really got to me and made me cry and gave me strange chills was Oradour-Sur-Glane, (site of Nazi massacre of French town after D-day), went with a friend in July 1994, just over 50 years after it happened.

 

[SteveP29]

One of the victims was a schoolfriend of many of my friends (3 years older than me) and I knew him as I'd served him a few times when I worked in my local.

He was one of the many unlucky souls who were never found, but personal possessions like wallet and mobile phone were found in the debris.

I was at work that morning and our Comms department had a PC dedicated to a Reuters feed for stock prices and such, one of the workers from that department read out the incoming feed, we all thought it was a light aeroplane that had got lost in fog or something and hit one of the towers. We paid it no mind until somebody came back from their lunch and said there was a live feed on TV and that it had been a passenger plane.
Many of us went to the recreation and smoking cabins (there was a TV in both) and ended up being fascinated by it, knowing we were at work but just couldn't tear ourselves away from it.
We saw the first tower collapse live, which was truly devastating.
Most of my colleagues back in the office were either unaware or not bothered by it and continued working (funnily enough, the ones who weren't bothered turned out to be the most unfeeling xxxxxxxx that I've ever come across in my life and I wouldn't want them as friends)
I had a radio walkman I used to take to the match with me to keep up with scores elsewhere pre internet and listened to tapes when going to and from work on the bus, I didn't listen to a tape going home that afternoon, I was glued to the radio, then straight to the TV when I got home.

I was 27 at the time and after hearing Bush saying how they'd retaliate, I wondered how long it would be before call up papers came through the door for me as I really thought we were on the brink of a third world war. I wouldn't have gone by the way.

 

[Strathclyder]

The original towers are still missed.

I may catch some flak for this, but the Twin Towers are by some margin my all-time favourite skyscrapers (I have three posters of pre-9/11 Lower Manhattan up on my bedroom walls, plus my PC wallpaper is of a view up at the Twins from the plaza below, the tops of them completely shrouded in mist to the point their roofs are invisible; an image like this).

The way they, a pair of seemingly soulless boxes the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings came in, caught and kept hold of your attention is something few other super-tall buildings have managed to achieve. Their sheer scale in and of itself was awe-inspiring. Aside from being Lower Manhattan's 'anchor', I think this was due to them coming to symbolize the American economy more than any other building. Of course, this symbolism is what ultimately destroyed them.

 

[Springs Branch]

9/11 is one of three unexpected events for which I can answer the "where were you when you heard ...?" question without hesitation. (The others are the death of Diana and death of the Queen)

On 11 Sep 2001 I was living in California (time difference from NYC 3hrs) and I first heard 'something was up' on the car radio on the drive to work. Info at that stage was very confused, with no mention of terrorism etc.

Arriving at my office, it was straight to the desktop PC rather than the coffee machine, and a frustratingly long wait (maybe a minute) to log in and get more info from Yahoo!

The company I was with had a fair contingent of expat. Brits working there. By midday, almost all our American colleagues had left and gone home; all of the Brits & Aussies carried on trying to work as normal. One comment at the time, once the hijack component became public, was "oh, we're used to the IRA blowing places up all the time". Before knock-off time it became obvious this was in a totally different league and the mood was appropriately sombre.

 

[185143]

9/11 is one of three unexpected events for which I can answer the "where were you when you heard ...?" question without hesitation. (The others are the death of Diana and death of the Queen)

On 11 Sep 2001 I was living in California (time difference from NYC 3hrs) and I first heard 'something was up' on the car radio on the drive to work. Info at that stage was very confused, with no mention of terrorism etc.

Arriving at my office, it was straight to the desktop PC rather than the coffee machine, and a frustratingly long wait (maybe a minute) to log in and get more info from Yahoo!

The company I was with had a fair contingent of expat. Brits working there. By midday, almost all our American colleagues had left and gone home; all of the Brits & Aussies carried on trying to work as normal. One comment at the time, once the hijack component became public, was "oh, we're used to the IRA blowing places up all the time". Before knock-off time it became obvious this was in a totally different league and the mood was appropriately sombre.

The ones that spring to mind for me, as I'm too young to remember 9/11.

The death of Her Majesty and the derailment at Carmont, both when the news broke and when pictures got leaked. When the Queen died, I was sat at home waiting to go to work for the start of a run on night shifts. I was infront of the TV with my Dad when her death was announced, my Mum then came in and told us as well. My Dad can remember exactly where he was and what he was doing when 9/11 happened.

When Carmont happened, I was having a Wetherspoons breakfast in Sedgeley near Wolverhampton. Then when the pictures leaked I was queueing to get into the 'Spoons at Merry Hill shopping centre. That understandably hit rather more than just rumour on social media. Going home that night was rather unnerving heading through a fairly large thunderstorm that's for sure!

 

[Pinza-C55]

For those of us who were alive and old enough at the time, it was such a big world-changing event that we all remember where we were when we heard- much like the JFK assassination was for my dad's generation. I was 19 and a few days off leaving home for University so I'd been at a house party in Halifax the night before. I'd driven back to my home that day with my then-girlfriend, arriving not long after the first plane hit. As we'd had a tape on in the car rather than the radio, we were both oblivious until my mum opened the door to greet us saying "have you heard what's just happened? A plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre!" My mum had the BBC News channel on, and the breaking news was showing smoke pouring out of the first tower. At that point we all assumed it was some sort of tragic accident... when the second plane hit, I somehow convinced myself it was some sort of elaborate Max Headroom style prank. The idea of such a thing being planned on purpose was simply outlandish.

I was checking tickets on a southbound train at Durham and an old guy asked me if I had heard about the two planes crashing into the WTC towers. I couldn't understand what he meant and I thought he had been drinking. When I got back to York I put the TV on and my jaw just dropped when I saw them burning.

 

[Busaholic]

I was checking tickets on a southbound train at Durham and an old guy asked me if I had heard about the two planes crashing into the WTC towers. I couldn't understand what he meant and I thought he had been drinking. When I got back to York I put the TV on and my jaw just dropped when I saw them burning.

I went into a pub in Truro about 5 p.m. i.e. about three hours after the attacks, and a silent TV above the bar was playing the two Twin Towers incidents over and over again: I asked the bored-looking barmaid what was going on and she said ''haven't you heard, New York has been attacked'', I quickly downed my half pint and ran back to my car to turn on the radio and try to process the appalling news before I returned home.

 

[gg1]

9/11 is one of three unexpected events for which I can answer the "where were you when you heard ...?" question without hesitation. (The others are the death of Diana and death of the Queen)

The 3 big ones for me are:

9/11 - I was off work that week and at home, one of my housemates had seen it online and told me about 30 minutes after the news broke, we were all glued to the TV news coverage until well after midnight.
Princess Diana - in a taxi office waiting for a taxi home after going to a nightclub. I was crashing at a friends house that night and we'd both had rather a lot to drink at the time, I remember him saying the following morning that he thought it was a strange dream until he turned on the TV.
Challenger disaster - watching Newsround just after 5pm (for those too young to remember, it was a daily news programme targeted specifically at children and aired at the end of the afternoon's CBBC TV schedule), the disaster actually happened just before the programme went on air.

And one happy one (for me anyway):
Thatcher resigning - just about to start an English Literature lesson at senior school when the teacher mentioned she'd resigned. I was 15 at the time and had no memory of any other PM.

 

[Pinza-C55]

The 3 big ones for me are:

9/11 - I was off work that week and at home, one of my housemates had seen it online and told me about 30 minutes after the news broke, we were all glued to the TV news coverage until well after midnight.
Princess Diana - in a taxi office waiting for a taxi home after going to a nightclub. I was crashing at a friends house that night and we'd both had rather a lot to drink at the time, I remember him saying the following morning that he thought it was a strange dream until he turned on the TV.
Challenger disaster - watching Newsround just after 5pm (for those too young to remember, it was a daily news programme targeted specifically at children and aired at the end of the afternoon's CBBC TV schedule), the disaster actually happened just before the programme went on air.

And one happy one (for me anyway):
Thatcher resigning - just about to start an English Literature lesson at senior school when the teacher mentioned she'd resigned. I was 15 at the time and had no memory of any other PM.

I was on my way to the Quorn railwayana swapmeet at about 6.30 Sunday morning the taxi driver told me about Princess Diana.
Can't remember what I was doing when the Challenger exploded.
Bradford Stadium fire I saw it live on TV.
Moon landing watched it on TV.
When Thatcher resigned I lived 5 minutes walk from Buckingham Palace so I went to see her driven in and driven away.

 

[birchesgreen]

I didn't know about 911 for some time that day, i had had a day off work and was in town with my (first) wife, had dinner out et cetera. I only found out 911 was happening because i needed to pop into Rackhams to use the bog, and the gents were on the 6th floor with all the TVs. I came out of the toilet and was greeted with about a score of TV images of one of the twin towers collapsing. As you can imagine it was quite a... sight.

 

[tigerroar]

Of all of the videos that surfaced on the day there's one that hits home the hardest is from almost directly in front of the two towers where the fire brigade had set up a type of command point. I think it was shot by a TV news crew so is good quality but the first tower starts to collapse and they all run, but it was clear from what we could see that they had no idea that either tower would collapse.

So sad that so many firefighters were blindly going into the towers thinking that they were putting a fire out.

 

[Trackman]

Same for Herald Of Free Enterprise

That's touched a nerve, I was on it a few days before it capsized.

Anyway back on topic, memories of 9/11 are from a relative living in NYC telling me there was a lot a disinformation - even from the Police. She also told me the smell was terrible. Also asked what Sky News (UK) was saying

 

[Sorcerer]

Of all of the videos that surfaced on the day there's one that hits home the hardest is from almost directly in front of the two towers where the fire brigade had set up a type of command point. I think it was shot by a TV news crew so is good quality but the first tower starts to collapse and they all run, but it was clear from what we could see that they had no idea that either tower would collapse.

I wonder just how many people would consider that to be just as if not more shocking than the initial impacts of the planes themselves. Given that no steel structure in history had collapsed due to fire combined with the buildings being designed to hold up against strong winds, along with standing firm after the 1993 bombing, I don't think anyone truly expected the twin towers to collapse. Even more regrettably, that would've been a pleasant surprise to Osama when he heard about it later.