Second Tower, in my office building 6 blocks away looking out the window.
First tower falls - On Rector street taking pictures and video of the fires.
Second tower falls - taking refuge at 1 NY Plaza lobby.

First Tower, - in the PATH train heading towards WTC.

Wow...in the PATH of that, dangerous... :/

Well, back in 2001, I was a freshman in HS. The day was just starting and about midway through our first class, we heard some vague rumor that the WTC had been attacked. None of us really thought anything of it as we just assumed it was nothing serious. It wasn't until the end of our first class (~9:30 am) that the full extent of what had happened was obvious to all. For the rest of the day, the entire school sat in stunned silence as we watched the news reports. I'll never forget watching the towers collapse live on the news. Just the idea that something like that could happen had never gone through any of our minds. We knew that something BIG had happened that day, and that our lives would never be quite the same.

RIP Heroes and Victims, you'll never be forgotten and always be missed.

I was in fourth grade, and I remember kids parents coming to get there kids out of class. The teachers were so shaken, but we didn't know what was going on. I remember going home and watching the towers on the news collapse over and over again. To this day it's still so surreal, that memory.

It was my second day at National Police training, it was a Tuesday and i remember hundreds of people crammed around the smallest TV i have ever seen. I then watched the same images over and over again all week and all the next weekend.

Ill never forget that day.

It was before school for me. I wanted to watch DBZ, but all the channels were showing the attack. And then my dad shouted at me for distracting him from the news.

Fall is really my favorite time of year. The oppressive heat of August is waning and I generally expect to go into the hills on a hike on the first clear weekend. This was certainly such a day. I think I remember the crystal clear blue sky the most. The blue sky, that later that day, for the first time in my life, would not contain a single airplane that I could see. They had beautiful flying conditions didn't they? Probably there was not the slightest turbulence to test the feeble skills of these pilots who couldn’t land.

I went to work mildly worried about the possibility of a West Nile Virus outbreak in the vicinity. My students had discussed it the day before. It was their habit to blow things out of proportion. On Tuesdays, I covered literature. We were discussing symbolism. I remember telling my students that day, "This didn't destroy us, they didn't even have a prayer of toppling the United States. These targets were selected as a symbolic attack on American wealth and power". In response to my ignorant remark one of my student's incredulously stated "He's still trying to teach". What else could I do? The world had spun from beneath my feet. I reflexively grabbed onto the only thing I could.

Well that was later, At around 9:30 (I really only remember it was first period) my boss came in and said "Turn your T.V. on". I saw the first tower had been hit. The caption read that a "plane had crashed into the WTC". Assuming this to be a tragic accident, I began to tell the students about the B-25 (?) that crashed into the Empire State building fifty years before. As I spoke the second plane hit. My words died in my mouth. This was terrorism, and I was there trying my best to make sense of a senseless situation in front of an equally bewildered group of young people. "Why do they hate us?" one asked. I began to formulate an answer based on border lines drawn and redrawn by imperialist nations, and people held captive by "friendly" dictatorships. I looked him in the eye and said "I don't know".

I had no loss that day. None of my family died; none of my friends were injured. The shock that I experienced was just that. I buried no one, and as a result I am inconsequential to this discussion. I can only say that I feel heartily sorry for those who did lose friends and loved ones on that day. An American life is worth no more than any other. Every person who dies should be mourned. Everyone who is murdered should be remembered. Every breath drawn in should be enjoyed and every exhalation whispered with thanks. That day I performed my tasks and walked out of work under a bright, beautiful, blue sky that has always seemed less brilliant than it did the morning I walked in.

I was in Nuclear Power School down in South Carolina. We were in the middle of Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow class with a rather snarky MM1, when the full bird captain that was in charge of the school came over the intercom telling us about what had happened. We had heard that a plane had hit the WTC earlier, but most of us had assumed it was some jacktard in a Cesssna, which was tragic, sure, but nothing to freak out about.

Prior to this, the Charleston Weapon Station was a totally open base. My dad and brother had visited a few months before this, and had been able to drive right up to my barracks. That same day, we had reservist Marines called up to patrol the grounds. People were flipping. That same MM1 kept talking about if this was for real, he was getting the hell out of this teaching billet and back on a submarine.

On a side note, the school was also in the final approach for the Charleston Air Force base, which apparently was a regional hub for C-5 Galaxy flights. So if you can imagine how we tensed up when they would fly a couple hundred feet over the school several times a day.

I was in fifth grade, like you obi. I didn't know anything had happened until the principal came on over the PA saying the WTC had been "bombed." None of us knew what happened really until we got out of school and saw it on TV. So I didn't know the whole story till around 3 or 4. But the teachers were clearly distressed... it showed even for a young kid like me.

I was pulling into the parking lot at work when the radio announced unconfirmed reports of a plane crashing into tower one. Got in there and nobody was working. Every one was huddled around the lobby TV watching things unfurl, so we dug out a VCR from storage and hooked it up to an overhead projector so we could all see what was happening. Nothing got done that day as we were all in shock and coudln't believe what was happening.

I was driving home after staying late for an inservice at the hospital, listening to the radio and enjoying the weather. The radio jocks at first were unsure of the accuracy and the why of the first impact. While they were trying to get details the second hit. I also recall how empty the skies were for days after, and knowing every aircraft that was in the sky was military.

Warsprite, I lived on one of the circling paths around Cinci airport and it was eerie how quiet it was. You don't realize how comfortingly familier having planes in the sky is until there are none.

I bet. I know your not far from Wright -Patterson also.

Then we lived maybe 1 hour (45 or 50 miles away, down in Fairfield) from WPAFB. It was a bit scary when several F4 Phantom IIs went streaking overhead the next day. Never did hear why they scrambled them.

In the early 60's I lived a little place called Goshen Ohio. NE of Cinci. We would get regular sonic booms.

Yep, and the traumatic effects of having to run for dear life away from the dust cloud while taking in the numbing fact that you just saw the building that we were familiar with (I did my new-hire training at Windows on the World.) crash down to earth... was enough to make me move to Japan.

I know Goshen. You must be a bit older than me, though, as we moved to Cinci when I was 3 in 1969 after my dad got out of the Navy.

I had just turned 6 years old a few months ago when it happened. A family friend was coming over that day and while she was on her way to visit us (around 9 or 10 o'clock) she heard about it on the radio and called us. We turned on the tv and watched all the reports. I can still remember my impressions about how the videos that they had of the first plane crashing were just from everyday tourists filming the WTC Towers and how shocking and horrifying it must have been for them to actually see it. Other than that and a memory snapshot of standing in front of the tv with my mom and little brother watching the news replay those videos over and over.

We moved there in 1961 at about age 7, after my dad started working for the Navy's purchasing agencey. They had alot of contracts with Cincinnati Milling Co, and others in the area. We moved to Indy in 68.

I was woken up to go to first grade when it happened... I remember my teacher was from new York so he announced.
I lived in new York before and acctually my dad worked on the 47th floor of WTC tower one a few years before. I went up to the top when I was like 4 so it was kind of weird... Moving to California might have saved his life.

Was helping my friend build a horse fence - guess you'd call it a corral - in the Highlands of Scotland. Early morning. In for a cup of tea, noticed the news on TV. After the second one went down, we decided, 'Well that's it. Only to be expected one day," and went back to building fences.

i was in 7th grade
there were rumors and whispers going around all morning about what had happened
i heard the first true stories at lunch, and then my teacher was talking about it in class right after lunch
i remember watching it on cnn all afternoon and just trying to understand what was happening and why people would do these things to other people...
9 years later and i still don't get it

I was holding the most important staff meeting of the year, now that summer was over, everyone was back from vacation. I was introducing a new budget system and started to notice that there were more distractions than usual. People in the back were whispering, beepers were going off, Police and Fire officers were coming in and out. Finally the Personnel Director yelled, "A plane crashed into the Word Trade Center." My first thought was that it sounded like a tragic accident. Next I thought about how everyone hates meetings and budgets, but come on, why couldn't they get focused? I kept doing the presentation and the distractions got worse until someone else yelled, "Another plane just hit the 2nd tower". I finally ended the meeting so we could cluster around the TV. Suddenly my silly little world, budgets, meetings, my ego, it all seemed completely insignificant.

Also my husband had to speak at a ceremony today. His boss' husband died on one of the airplanes on 9-11.

It was a Tuesday (I don't know why I remember that, but I do). I live in the Pacific time zone, so all this had gone down before I got to school. Our fourth grade teacher started the class telling us that 1. some planes had been flown into some buildings, knocking them down, 2. it was arranged by a bad man who said that he wanted to hurt America, and 3. don't discuss this with the younger grades: we don't want to scare them little kids.
Two days later, everyone gathered outside in front of the school by the flag pole on the national day of prayer that had been called and the principal said a prayer (I don't remember it's contents). I also remember the planes being grounded for two days and an assortment of other eclectic tidbits.

About a year ago, I realized something: when I'm an old geezer, I'm going to be some of the last living memory of that! I'll be one of those codgers on one of those PBS specials they have.

hahaha, yeah me too baum. I've always been jealous of the people who were born in the late 19th century and then lived up through the 1960's or 70's because of how much cultural change they got to see. I certainly I hope to get to see as much as they did.

@baum: No, you don't want that.

@jman: No, you don't want that.

Sorry if my comment seemed to denigrate anything American. Not the intention. It's just that, on this side of the water, it was easy to see that something BIG was coming along. Just didn't know what nor where. We knew why.

Can anyone explain George W's reaction (in the primary school)? Did he know? Saudi connections? Maybe America should be doing some internal auditing - even if a tad late.