(and i predict 10-20 posts before this turns into a hate fight, probably started by krellin/Putin)

No, actually FD, it took two posts. Congratulations on starting it.

I was at home watching it on my TV eating a bowl of Cheerios. I remember it pretty vividly...

How was i hating? Not that i am hating or anything

I ignored the news and read a book called Dear Exile. I figured wed be talking about it for years so why bother watching the news. Sick of hearing about it.

Okay, you were right FD. Forget what I said; never mind, and thank you for reminding me that Putin doesn't have any clue what the hell he's talking about and that I should mute him before I look at this thread again.

I told the truth, gfy.

Accepted

and there's Putin...

I'm going to try again.

Write your stories. Bottom line, if you are sick of 9/11, this isn't a thread you should talk in. If you are of some anti-American sentiment and think that this was Bush's fault, get the fuck off my thread.

I was in third grade when it happened. I live a little over an hour outside NYC, so I remember lots of kids getting pulled out of their classrooms by their parents. Somebody started a rumor that there was a bomb threat on the school or something and idk, maybe planes were mentioned. It was crazy. I came home and saw the towers burning and collapsing in the news.

I was at a carpooling friends house when i saw the television show the plane hitting the building. When I got to school The teachers had the t.v's on watching it. I watched them both fall in the news and when I got home from school my parents were arguing because my dad wanted to reenlist and my mom was flippin out about it. My cousin worked in the WTC building. She is still hella shook up about everything. But thankfully she worked in a lower floor and was able to get out.

My ninth grade teacher turned off the TV to give us a spelling test, saying something to the equivalent of "They're not going anywhere." Afterward, the first tower had collapsed. Fucking jerk.

Someone had to be optimistic 2nd. Or maybe just afraid of what would happen. Or just plain stupid I guess?

A family friend of ours worked in the tower and told us the next time we saw him that some TV show on Monday night saved his life because he missed his alarm staying up late and was a half hour late to work. Turns out he was like 20 minutes away when the first tower got hit.

I was nine and not in the immediate proximity of the attacks. The event is as much a part of history and not a part of my life as Pearl Harbor.

I walked out of my house on the way to the bus stop. My neighbor was standing on his front lawn, and asked if I had seen the news. Nope. A plane had crashed into the WTC. Wow, crazy. Neither of us had any idea what all was involved.

I arrived at a meeting site. Half the people were no-shows with no word. The other half of us sat around, not sure if we should try to proceed or call it off. We still didn't know the details, although there was some rumor of a terrorist attack (but not multiple planes, etc.). Eventually some of us contacted our offices, which mostly had shut down for the day. We canceled the meeting and I went home, and watched the news for the rest of the day to figure out what had happened.

I was driving my car up the Florida turnpike toward Orlando when i heard about it on the radio. I immediately turned back home since they still didn't know if more planes were coming.

I was at work in the woodshop, way in the back in the spray booth, and one of the craftsmen came back and said "hey, somebody just flew a plane into the world trade center" and I said something like "Ha ha, very funny," and then I saw the look on his face and knew something very, very bad had just happened. Our boss called us into his office a few minutes later to let us know what was going on. I guess we just worked the rest of the day.

Maybe an even bigger memory, for whatever reason, was later in the week. I went outside at 2:30 breaktime and saw jet trails across the sky for the very first time since the attacks when they shut down all the airlines. Such an amazing relief to see such simple things. You know, when do you ever really pay attention to jet trails? But that has always stuck in my mind.

I was delivering newspapers at the time in the early mornings; I got home and went to bed about an hour before American Airlines 11 crashed into the north tower (one of the stories on the front page that morning below the fold was the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massood). I woke up later that morning to hear an AM radio morning show host with a penchant for humor talking about terrorist attacks and people fleeing from tall buildings around the country. I thought for sure it was a joke. Then I looked at the clock and saw that it was 11AM (Pacific Time) and his show was supposed to have been over two hours before. I turned on the TV in a panic to see the WTC towers falling again... and again... and again. I probably watched it 15 times that day. I went out for a late lunch that day after the initial shock had worn off and remember everyone's headlights were on even though it was still daytime. I was in my last semester of college at the time, and my class that evening was cancelled.

I still have about half a dozen copies of the LA Times from September 12th, 2001 somewhere.

I was doing a JDE software implementation in Leeds and I was at the warehouse when the news came through, the BBC website went down so I rang home.
My mum told me she was watching on TV and that a US air force jet was tracking one of the planes, I never saw those pictures but later heard a courageous story of how passengers on a flight had attacked the cockpit of a plane heading for the White House and my immediate thought was, a US fighter plane has shot down a domestic plane en route to the White House ........ I looked for details of this but all was coming out was about the courageous passengers and I thought how is this story coming out so quick amid such confusion, then I thought that there was a cover up.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I'm not sure if anybody else has ever heard this story but my mum said there was definitely a fighter jet following one of the planes.on the early news but nothing about this later on.

I was in Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow at nuc school in South Carolina.

Captain came over the intercom, and our previously open base had reservist Sailors and Marines out front locked and loaded.

On a side note, one thing that really made me sad was that there was a young officer instructor (sea returnee) that was of Iranian descent (I believe his family fled after the Shah fell). He couldn't leave the base unless he was in uniform, otherwise he'd be harassed. Which is complete bullshit, and I wish we as Americans were better than that.

I was in sixth grade, and didn't really know what was happening for a while since none of my teachers in the morning had the TV on. I remember finding out just as band ended that the second tower had collapsed. During lunch there was one of those ridiculous little kid fights since one guy and some hangers-on thought we "kept all our weapons" in the Pentagon and now we didn't have an army. Later, in Social Studies or some such horrible made-up class they make young kids do, our teacher tried explaining to us who bin Laden was. I remember picturing him as the Sultan from Aladdin, but in a Bond villain kind of way. Not as Jafar, weirdly enough. Osama really did look like Jafar. On the bus ride back we were all talking about whether this means we were at war now and whether there would be a draft and if we'd end up having to fight. The principle gave a speech the next morning that I thought was really profound at the time but I have a suspicion I wouldn't think too much of now. And within a week we were writing poems and letters and other busy-work on it all. The school district also used it as an excuse to cut the eighth grade trip to DC. They still haven't done it since, as far as I know.

Invictus just reminded me that for a day or so after 9/11 I thought it was this guy Bill Laden who was behind it all.

I actually agree with Bad Vlad here... I didn't give much of a rats ass then and certainly don't now. I distinctly remember stacking plastic cups high at the restaurant I worked at, and then my Mexican friend Justino would shriek, "Al Quaeda!" and launch a heavy ToGo box at them.

I, of course, took that opportunity to savagely pummel Justino (even though I gave him the box in the first place), and then I beat up this other guy Alex who I really didn't like anyways because he refused to let me check and make sure he didn't have another ToGo box hidden somewhere on his person.

Of course, I had to convince the manager of the restaurant to make a few invasive new rules to protect us from this kind of threat in the future - I'm happy to say that our LOYAL employees were more than happy to submit to them to ensure the security of our plasticware.




A FB friend yesterday wrote "We Will Never Forget." To which I responded, "We would if you'd let us."

sorry Bo, I just read your invitation to not post if you're sick of it.... too late now I guess.

As nicely and as friendly as I can mean it, go fuck yourself YJ. People from my town died in the WTC, and I have friends in Afghanistan because of it.

I have a few jokes about 9/11 so lets fly right into them.

As a European I was at work, listening to the radio at around 16:00 or so when the news got in. All news sites were down due to instant peaktraffic, and we just sat there, listening tot he radio. Roughtly 90 minutes later on the train home, no one else knew about it yet. And everyone was looking at me weither or not I was telling some sick joke.

11 Years have passed, and a lot of things have happened. And after this many years I can't help getting the feeling 9/11 is this much in the news to keep the goodwill of people concerning the war in Afganistan.

I was in 5th grade, and it was a little after 5am when the news broke that the first Tower had been hit...

I didn't know what the WTC was, and I figured it was probably a piloting accident and it'd be on the news for a while...that it was really sad all those people died, but nothing else, really, except that it was probably going to be like when Princess Diana died.

Aside from LA-centered things like the OJ trial and the riots and especially the Northridge earthquake--I still remember waking up to see the fish tank we had at our old house smashed on the floor--Princess Diana's Death is really the oldest memory of a major tragedy that I can recall, so that was mostly what I had to compare 9/11 to at the time.

So I just thought it'd be like that.

My sister and I always watched cartoons downstairs for a bit before going up to change for school...

And JUST as I'm walking up the stairs and reach the top, I can see the TV in my mom's room...

And THAT was when the 2nd plane, on LIVE TV, started heading for the South Tower.

I watched it LIVE, and that changed EVERYTHING.

My sister and I then rushed to get dressed and go back downstairs to--completely against the normal inclination for a grade schooler--turn on the news...

And that was when he heard the PENTAGON had been hit, and I knew what that was, and that it was in Washington D.C., so this must be a nation-wide attack.

My mom was freaking out; my dad was supposed to fly back to North Carolina for a business meeting that weekend, and she called him immediately and repeated over and over that he had to cancel...

The radio was on in my 5th grade class, and so I heard a while later before class actually started, with the teachers and a few other kids that had arrived early, that the Towers had fallen.

That's one of the few classes that young where I can still remember something the teacher actually said almost verbatim...

The teacher said there was going to be a name we were going to probably hear A LOT over the next days, and probably longer, and asked if we had an idea who it was...

I asked if it was Saddam Hussein, as that was someone I knew from TV cartoons and the news and knew he was supposed to be an enemy...

He said "Probably him too, but..." and that was how I learned who Osama bin Laden was.

This sort of international politics and news-around-us session lasted about 20 minutes, then we had a break, and back to our regularly-scheduled class activities.

Went home, my dad canceled his flight plans (the planes were grounded for a few days afterward, so he couldn't have gone anyway) and I learned about the 4th plane that crashed in Pennsylvania because of its brave passengers, more news, and then bed.

And that was 9/11 for me, way back when.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbC5f2z6PmI

I noticed yesterday on Facebook that people had different ways of marking and remembering the day, or different attitudes towards it, and that for some reason 9/11 was an occasion that showed who the assholes were.

"I noticed yesterday on Facebook that people had different ways of marking and remembering the day, or different attitudes towards it, and that for some reason 9/11 was an occasion that showed who the assholes were."

There are trolls everywhere, trying to agitate people; assholes if you wish.
Then again, there are people with different views on things; not assholes.

September 11 is my wife's birthday.

In 2001, I went to work like any other day. I had AIM for business purposes and yes, I had a few friends on it too, but I was very careful which ones were able to AIM me at work. Anyway. It was a slow day, so I was talking with a female friend about what to do for my wife for her birthday, mostly just passing the time since I already had a plan. Then she sends me a message about the first plane hitting, and we all thought it was some single passenger plane that made a huge mistake, we even laughed slightly about it. "How can you accidentally hit something that big?"

We were horrified as we discovered it was no accident.

At 11:00, the boss shut the office down and took us out to lunch at a place with big screen TV's to watch the news about it. After I left there, I went to buy flowers. I was asked if I was intending to send them to New York, and I said no, it's my wife's birthday. I picked her up and took her out to dinner because I wasn't going to have her day be ruined. We went to a nice place in downtown Ann Arbor, pretty much the restaurant mecca of southeast Michigan, and usually every place is crowded. We were the only people there besides employees that night.

My cousin Jason lived 3 blocks from the World Trade Center and was known to often stop by the Borders there in the mornings. It took us four days before anyone in the family heard from him, and even then, there were still sirens in the background the whole time. My brother was deployed to Ground Zero as a member of the Army National Guard. The next couple of days I volunteered a little to help people grounded at the Detroit airport.

That's basically all I got.

I was in the K grade at St. Michael's and watched it on TV and later watched Bush's Ground Zero Speech

I was minutes from my office when the first plane hit. The news on the radio was a brief interruption about a "small" plane crashing into the WTC. When I get in, the owner had the radio tuned in so we were could all hear but as time went along and the plane got "bigger" he dug out an old TV and we all huddled around that watching it when we saw the second plane hit live. At that point we knew the free world (America and all those in the WTC from many countries) was under attack.

That was the week before my vacation was to start. By the time the weekend rolled around, my wife and I were ready and needed to escape to a cabin in the woods (our favortie vacation spot) with the dogs and no TV or radio for a week.

I live in the UK. I had a site meeting not far from home when we heard the news. I went ome early and just sat transfixed all day watching the news - I can be a news junky at times.

In the evening I remember watching question time (a political programme with a panel of guests who answer questions from the floor) I was amazed that the subject quickly turned to how America could have been 'at fault'. I'm all for freedom of expression etc and it is important that the causes should be fully explored but the timing of these discussions when they were still digging bodies out was unbelievable.

For the record whilst the causes should be explored, I do not think America caused the attacks. The responsibility should lay squarely on the perps.

I was asleep when the first one hit, and my ex wife came up and woke me up crying and such, and I wandered downstairs, thinking she was being dramatic, and that is when the 2nd one hit. Was like having Cold Water poured all over me.

I worked in New Jersey at the time, but lived near Philly, so i have to go across the Ruver ti get to work.

FBI was everywhere checking under those bridges, and it gave me some sort of strange feeling as I drove across.

I was in my Administrative Procedure class when the towers got hit. The mood on campus was *noticeably* different when I walked out, even before I knew what had happened.

I was at work (in the UK) and someone came back from lunch and said he'd heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the twin towers. Our first assumption was that it was a light aircraft. We speculated that it may have been terrorists in a small plane which was (worst case) packed with explosives - terrorists had tried for the towers before, with a bomb in a van.

We couldn't get onto any news sites, most of the internet seemed to be down, but a games forum (Star Fleet Command) was still up and someone on there posted a picture taken from their TV. From that you could see that it was a large passenger plane. Oh Shit! Then the news came in that the second tower had been hit - we didn't get a lot of work done that day.

Side note: Several people from the office were flying to our US office at the time. They were diverted to Greenland and eventually flew home a few days later. A girl at work had a cousin who worked in one of the twin towers. They didn't make it.

Like Speaker & Maniac, I was working in the UK. Once the news of the 'accident' came in, we got no work done - everyone was glued to the internet.

You guys all speak of how you were on the internet all day.. I know a few news sites crashed. Anyone else remember that?

Much of the US's New England and mid Atlantic regions had internet issues as there was a major segment ran through the area. Cell towers were overloaded all over the country as family tried to call relatives who worked or lived in and aroind the WTC and in DC. There was even some concern expressed at one point about regional power issues but I don't think anything came of that. At least nothing I recall. In the IT field, this began the push to multiple redundant server locations in business as well as data warehousing of backups across multiple sites in geographically distinct locales which was further enhanced with the damage done by Katrina.

Yeah, one of the things I did at my job at the time was process American Express payments, and American Express' only modem connection center (I don't know the real IT term) was in the Twin Towers. They were fully offline for days.

This is slightly off topic, but this has to be one of most touching stories I've read in a while.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2022942.stm

^^it is 9/11 related

On 9/11/01, one American was off-planet. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/sept11_culbertson.html

Strangely, one of my clearer memories from 9/11 was the first time I saw the crawl on CNN.

THM thanks for the link

Yeah, I remember seeing that. What's the line.. skyline is as beautiful as ever?