9/11 Attacks     

• At 8:55 am on September 11, 2001, a commercial airline jet crashed into the north tower of the Twin Towers, part of the World Trade Center office complex in lower Manhattan.

• Roughly 20 minutes later, a second passenger jet slammed into the south tower.

  
  

• The crashing of commercial planes, loaded with jet fuel, into the towers resulted in massive sustained fires on the upper floors of the Towers.

• And, after burning for roughly 35 minutes, the south tower buckled, collapsing in on itself and enveloping downtown Manhattan in smoke and ash.

• Then at 10:30, the north tower collapsed.

  
  

• The episode was not limited to America’s financial capital: a third aircraft struck the Pentagon, the military headquarters located just outside Washington D.C., and a fourth had gone down in western Pennsylvania.

  
  

• With four crashes in the early morning of September 11 – three of them into buildings – it was apparent that this was no accident.

• Before the cloud of dust over downtown Manhattan had even settled, the media began floating the name of a possible culprit: Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist organization based primarily in Afghanistan.

• Within days, the US government and its British allies would declare that Al Qaeda operatives had hijacked the four aircraft and deliberately crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

• The U.S. government also declared that the fourth aircraft was headed for a target in Washington DC, but was taken down by passengers aboard the aircraft when they became aware of the situation.

  
  

• 2,977 people died in the attacks.

• The event has come to be universally recognizable by two simple numbers: 9/11.

  
  

• The attack would lead the United States to invade Afghanistan in October of 2001.

• And in 2003, the United States would invade Iraq under the auspices of the war of terror.

  
  

• Today, the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan remembers those who lost their lives in the attacks.

• It consists of the 2 largest manmade waterfalls in North America located where the Twin Towers once shot out of the Manhattan bedrock.

• Etched into the panels surrounding the waterfalls are the names of every person who died in the 9/11 attacks as well as those of the victims of an earlier 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

Written By: Aiden Singh Published: July 26, 2020 Sources