Where were you when 9/11 happened?

[cu2010]

I was just a week into eighth grade...I was in science class when a teacher from across the hall cut in class and said that the towers had just been bombed (not realizing at the time what had happened...it was shortly before 9am). Needless to say, the rest of the day quickly turned from a normal school day to a day of watching TV...virtually every classroom had CNN on in the room, and school was effectively cancelled for the day.

[Zmapper]

I was only 4 and didn't have preschool that day. So in my mind September 11 was just like August 3 or November 15. From what my mother told me I was just playing outside blissfully unaware that part of New York was being destroyed while they were inside watching a news channel.

Not much of an exciting story I know.

[jgb191]

Perhaps the most amusing response in the paranoia following 9/11 was the Governor of Idaho closing and putting up pole barracades on the streets immediately adjacent to the Capitol building five days after the attack. Yeah, the capitol of Idaho was really going to be a terrorist target...

Just like no one would have thought that an open field in Somerset County in Pennsylvania was going to be one of the sites of 9/11.  Granted it wasn't a target, but it was still a major incident as a result of United flight 93.  So I guess no one was going to take any chances.

[algorerhythms]

I was a junior in high school at the time, and that morning I was in chemistry class. The biology teacher came in and said that the World Trade Center had been attacked and had collapsed, and that the White House was being evacuated. After the biology teacher left, the chemistry teacher pondered for a second, then told us, "Get back to work!" So, we finished our experiments.

Oddly, that morning the lights in the school went out for a few seconds which happened to occur around the time that the plane crashed in Somerset County, about 30 miles from my high school.

[corco]

Just like no one would have thought that an open field in Somerset County in Pennsylvania was going to be one of the sites of 9/11.  Granted it wasn't a target, but it was still a major incident as a result of United flight 93.  So I guess no one was going to take any chances.

Entirely different situation, though. Flight 93, as you mentioned, wasn't a target. Nobody decided to crash it right there.

Some pole barricades preventing cars from driving by the capitol of Idaho wouldn't have prevented Flight 93 from inadvertently crashing on top of it-  the only thing they could have prevented was a targeted land-based attack, like a car bomb. Which, again, I ask- would anybody waste their time carbombing the captiol of Idaho? I just can't fathom that situation- if I'm a terrorist and I'm going to all that trouble, I'd pick something a little bit more meaningful. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the carbombing of the Idaho capitol would have been greeted nationwide with a "What the hell?" rather than horror. Add to that that the actual building is pretty well elevated off the ground and set back from the road- it would take some crazy skills to detonate a car bomb that did any significant damage, so some random schmuck pissed off at taxes or whatever couldn't have pulled it off- it would have taken an organized terrorist body. Which, again, why would an organized terrorist body carbomb the capitol of Idaho? The capitol wouldn't have even been the most significant thing to target in Idaho- terrorists could have put a pretty decent dent in the nation's potato supply with a few well targeted potato plant attacks, and then we have an Air Force base, which would have been a more symbolically painful gesture.

Given that the roads around the capitol are primary commuter routes for folks in the North End, it was a ridiculous inconvenience for a significant portion of the city of Boise- they were finally taken down because nobody besides the governor (who was trying as hard as he could to make them permanent), including most of the state legislature wanted them there.

[english si]

I was in a 'citizenship' class at the end of the school day (or at least I was when the towers fell) - we were oblivious in our class that anything had happened - all the other year 11 (roughly equivalent to 10th grade, though it's the last compulsory year) citizenship classes had been watching the news, whereas we talked about stuff like "part of good citizenship is to be aware of what's going on in the world" (it was a brand new compulsory - from the Government - subject and it was our first lesson of it.) - we made some jests at the teacher afterwards about the irony of missing the news event of the decade because we were talking about needing to be aware of what's going on in the world!

I found out from a friend on the way home, and thought he was joking until I heard a snippet on the radio in a shop that basically confirmed that two planes had hit two towers in New York. The time of day it was (I'd wrongly thought it was earlier in New York than it was), the intended nature of the attack and the damage, didn't hit home until I got home and turned on the TV.

Other than a third of year 11 (the half who had citizenship then, minus my set), and some of the teachers, none of my school knew anything - it was very surreal walking around town, where some of the adults knew, others didn't and 1000 boys on the street who were completely and utterly carefree.

I had recently got back from university for summer when 7/7 happened, so was asleep when it happened. I found out about lunchtime when I went on the internet and someone told me - my Dad had been working at home and didn't know until I told him, which was odd, as he had colleagues in London, and his job at that point was about what to do if something happened to staff/data centre/etc.

The attempted plane bombings arrests were probably the one that will be strongest in my memory in years to come, mostly as it was so much more closer to home than even 7/7 (which had people from Luton and Aylesbury involved, which aren't that far away from me) - streets I vaguely knew, and less than 10 miles away, shut off (only a few hours before I found out) with someone who I went to school with and got on well with getting arrested. I was working at a college at the time, where he did a one year business qualification a couple of years before - some of the staff knew him and my co-data-putter-in-er thought that his link of going to church with the guy's mum was rather a close one, until I told him mine connections to him and gave several anecdotes about him that seem highly surprising given what he had been arrested for. Plus it also had the biggest direct effect on my life - we haven't "carried on as usual" and the liquids in hand luggage has annoyed me several times.

---
Poles around a capitol building would perhaps stop a Glasgow Airport-style attack, but I think people from Glasgow would be more effective than people from Gdansk - you don't see Gdansk people kicking people while they are on fire, just because they weren't suffering enough!

[FLRoads]

I was actually up in the Orlando area (northeast of Sanford to be exact) doing some land survey work for a state project. I had no real visualization of what had transpired that morning until the evening when I was back at the hotel and in front of a TV. Being out in the field all day, I only had a radio to listen to periodically, so I had to use my imagination as to what had happened and how it happened. And since we (me and one other person) were working a little bit away from civilization, the only noise you could hear that morning was the sound of plane engines from nearby Sanford International Airport overhead. By mid morning however, those noises stopped and created an eerie sensation in the woods where we were working. At that point we only knew of the planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and nothing more. So I knew when I no longer heard the sound of the engines that something was horribly wrong. Every so often we would jump in the truck to get an update, and with each one, the news sounded grimmer and grimmer. We finally called it a day at 3pm when we got a flat tire and had to go to a Goodyear in Sanford. Luckily it was still open, as most places had already closed due to the attacks. I had to fend for myself for food that evening and was able to only find an Arby's open in Lake Mary out by Interstate 4. Hardly anyone was out on the road, which for the Orlando area never happens. After eating my meal I ventured out onto the interstate and low and behold I was the only one on the stretch of I-4 between Lake Mary and Longwood!!! Not one vehicle was in either direction. It was just me and the interstate, which if anyone knows Interstate 4 at all, there is ALWAYS some form of traffic at any time of day. That moment (as well as the events of the day) still play fresh in my mind well to this day.

I also remember later in the week when things were getting somewhat back to "normal" about all the rumors on how possibly Disney was a potential target as well as the VAB out at Cape Canaveral, either of which I never found out if they were simply rumors started by the locals or indeed fact.

   

[J N Winkler]

9/11:  I was five time zones ahead of Washington and New York, so it was midafternoon when a housemate came into the kitchen (I was then living in a large house which had been subdivided into flats with a shared kitchen) and told me that a terrible thing had happened.  We tried to get information from the Internet, but the Guardian website was sandbagged by the traffic.  Eventually another housemate who owned a TV allowed us to use it to follow the news coverage.  We were glued to it as 7 World Trade Center came down.

3-11 (or 11-M as it is called in Spain):  I learned about this during a Web news check in the afternoon.  Fewer people died and the coverage in the Anglosphere fell off fast because, after all, it had happened in Spain.  Nevertheless I had more of a feeling of someone walking on my grave than with 9/11 because I had actually travelled on the commuter train routes which were involved in the bombings, less than four months previously.

7/7:  At 9.30 I had just heard that London had been chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, so I said, "This is an absolute disaster for London."  Then I heard about the Tube and bus explosions.

[nyratk1]

I was in 11th grade and in French class when it occured. A senior coming back from the bathroom mentioned something about "a small plane hitting the Twin Towers". The next period, the school principal came on the PA and elaborated on what had happened. The thing that I remember the most was the sense of chaos because people at first thought more than the WTC, the Pentagon and Shanksville had been attacked.

[english si]

7/7:  At 9.30 I had just heard that London had been chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, so I said, "This is an absolute disaster for London."  Then I heard about the Tube and bus explosions.

Having London News, I had heard the day before (was daylight when the news was given).

You're right though - in 24 hours London had something destructive and bad for the city long term... and multiple terrorist attacks (I guess that's better read out - I think similar jokes were being made within a week by some of the more risqué comedians).

The thing that I remember the most was the sense of chaos because people at first thought more than the WTC, the Pentagon and Shanksville had been attacked.

7/7 was similar - even a few hours after the events the BBC had 6 or 7 potential attacks (they couldn't work out if three reports at Aldgate, Aldgate East and Liverpool Street were one bomb or not, likewise Kings Cross and Russell Square). They did something similar for 21/7 (which given it was in the middle of the day, I picked up quickly), though that got corrected quicker, mostly as there wasn't a huge cloud of panic, secrecy and dust about, clouding where the bombs had failed to go off.

[mefailenglish]

9/11 I was working in a tall federal office building just outside Washington DC.  I still remember going up to the 15th floor and looking at the smoke coming from the Pentagon...

[florida]

I was a junior in high school at the time, and that morning I was in chemistry class. The biology teacher came in and said that the World Trade Center had been attacked and had collapsed, and that the White House was being evacuated. After the biology teacher left, the chemistry teacher pondered for a second, then told us, "Get back to work!" So, we finished our experiments.

Chemistry teachers have no personality. It would be nice if they could formulate one.


As for where I was, it was 10th Grade. A friend and I were walking up the stairs, during a break between classes, to her second-block class which was ironically a Sophomore's Social Studies/American History type class. The teacher had on the news coverage and we were pretty much the only people in the class as it was still during the break. I don't remember much else except that some classmate asked me, in front of our class, "Are you Arab?"   and I made $7.50 in tips at my serving job that night....in 3-4 hours.

[J N Winkler]

What I remember most clearly about the first hour after learning about 9/11 was the sheer sense of panic.  Two planes had already hit:  what if there were another 20 on their way?  Who was doing this and did they have the resources to escalate to, for example, a nuclear exchange?  And I was 3000 miles away from the actual scene of the events--it would have been a far more searing experience for New Yorkers with people throwing themselves off the WTC above the fire floors, large fractions of the entire city's firefighting force lost in the WTC collapses, etc.

It is no exaggeration to say that 9/11 was the Pearl Harbor of our generation.  But in terms of absolute numbers of lives lost, it was even worse.  2500 people died in Pearl Harbor; over 3000 died in 9/11.  Pearl Harbor was caused by an identifiable enemy sovereign state acting in accordance with its established military doctrine.  Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, was then, and still is, much harder to grasp hold of even at a conceptual level, let alone in terms of military response.

[74/171FAN]

I was a junior in high school at the time, and that morning I was in chemistry class. The biology teacher came in and said that the World Trade Center had been attacked and had collapsed, and that the White House was being evacuated. After the biology teacher left, the chemistry teacher pondered for a second, then told us, "Get back to work!" So, we finished our experiments.

Chemistry teachers have no personality. It would be nice if they could formulate one.

My current chemistry techer would probably kick you out of class if you said that because he is so hilarious during class.   

[NWI_Irish96]

My story is uninteresting, I was at work and people who weren't there yet called in and told us about it.

My dad however, was at his local golf course, and after checking in at the clubhouse, he had literally just walked out the door toward the first tee when the TV coverage cut in.  He and his playing partner, neither of whom owned a cell phone at the time, went on and played a full 4-hour, 18-hole round of golf before finally learning what had happened upon getting into their cars to head back home.  I figure he was one of the last Americans to find out what had happened.

[exit322]

I was on my way back to college from home (I had some personal business to attend to, as to why I was home on a Monday night with college being 75 minutes away)...didn't know about it until I got back to college, but I had gotten a sausage biscuit from the drive-thru at Hardee's when it happened.

[US71]

I woke up to CNN News on my radio talking about the "tragedy", but never, what I call, "backfilling" or bringing people up to date. There were photos of the smoke & debris on TV, but again no real details.
I found out what happened from NPR on my way to work.
Since all air flights were canceled, we had almost no business at the hotel and we spent most of shift watching the news and the replays of what happened. No one really spoke much... we were all in shock.
Meanwhile, there were lines at all the gas stations with prices zooming to over $6 a gallon.

[rawmustard]

I was working in the call center in the building where I currently work. I still have a vivid memory of looking out on one of the projection TVs they use to keep up on news and seeing the second plane hit the second tower in the live shot they had going since the first plane hit. Then I heard from other agents about the Pentagon and Shanksville and the enormity of what had happened hit me. I called home to my folks to tell them to turn on their TV or they might not have thought to do it themselves. We ended up being released early from work as a security precaution, and later I saw people make a run on a gas station over what turned out to be rumored supply problems.

[mightyace]

It is no exaggeration to say that 9/11 was the Pearl Harbor of our generation.  But in terms of absolute numbers of lives lost, it was even worse.  2500 people died in Pearl Harbor; over 3000 died in 9/11.  Pearl Harbor was caused by an identifiable enemy sovereign state acting in accordance with its established military doctrine.  Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, was then, and still is, much harder to grasp hold of even at a conceptual level, let alone in terms of military response.

Another difference is that Pearl Harbor was a military target and most of the casualties were members of our armed forces.  While the military target of the Pentagon was hit, the bulk of the casualties and damage occurred at the World Trade Center towers which are obviously civilian targets.  And, even at the Pentagon, the majority of the people on the aircraft that crashed there were civilians as well.

[Mr_Northside]

I actually remember seeing the breaking-news headline on the Post-Gazette website right after the first plane hit... The headline was only "plane crashes into World Trade Center building"... At the time I, for whatever reason, assumed it was just going to be some small 1-man aircraft accidentally crashing into the building, and didn't bother clicking on the link (I was in a class at the time).  By the time that class was over, it was obvious that I assumed wrong.

[oscar]

I was commuting into work in downtown D.C., with the radio off.  My normal commute swings south of the Pentagon, but I got within a mile of the Pentagon just after the attacks started, when inbound traffic completely stopped.  Complete traffic stoppages are unusual even in the D.C. area, but that one didn't seem extraordinary for some reason.  Since I couldn't see the Pentagon or the rising smoke from where I was on VA 27 approaching I-395, and my car radio was still turned off, I had no clue about what was happening.  So I did a U-turn across the grassy median to get to the I-66 Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, my usual plan-B route into work. 

I managed to make it slowly over the Potomac, and out the E Street Expressway.  But when I saw the White House surrounded by Secret Service agents with submachine guns, that's when I turned on the radio to figure out what was going on.  By then, both of the WTC towers had come down, and the order was issued to evacuate Federal offices in downtown D.C.  I turned south instead of continuing east to my office, working my way slowly down to I-295 to return to Virginia via the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (by then most or all the bridges between D.C. and Arlington were reportedly closed).  With all the road closures extending into the Virginia suburbs -- including US 50 all the way out to Falls Church -- it took me four hours to get home in Arlington on the back roads that had not been closed. 

All the other drivers sharing my situation were orderly, patiently waiting in line and leaving the shoulders open for emergency vehicles ... but also carefully looking around for the rumored incoming planes that had not yet been accounted for. 

[hbelkins]

Seeing all these people post about how they were in school or (gasp) in single digits age-wise makes me think this is a pretty young crowd. You all are a bunch of young pups and I'm the resident old fart.

Anyway, I was at work listening to the radio and getting ready to put out a weekly newspaper (and wondering what we were going to have for news that week since it had been a slow news week in Powell County, Ky.) when I heard the report of a plane crashing into one of the towers. I dismissed it as an accident. One of the females working there had a nosy granny who called her at the drop of a hat so she was on the phone with her grandmother who was watching everything on TV. We had no TV in our office. When I heard the second plane had it, I knew it was no accident. Then the subsequent reports came in about the Pentagon and the Flight 93 crash.

We lived in Winchester at the time and my wife was design editor/senior staff writer for the daily paper there, so she had a busy day with getting the latest news in the afternoon paper. She got home on time and told me that I wouldn't want to watch the day's events on TV. I had a much longer day since I was doing all layout and production as well as writing, but I got home late that night and got to see some of the coverage.

Turns out that 9/11 ended up being our big news for the week, but not in the way you might think. Our publisher did not want state or national news on the front page because, he said, there are other sources for that and our newspaper was the only place to get local coverage. The county fair was going on that week and the night's activities were suspended. I think it was more out of fear than out of respect, although why anyone would think that Stanton and Clay City, Ky. and the Powell County Fair would be a target for terrorists is beyond me. The cancellation of the fair's activities on Sept. 11 was our big story for the week.

Prior to that day, the "I remember when..." moments for me were the moon landing and Nixon's resignation. And I have to say, as an aside, that the aftermath of 9/11 got me much more interested in politics and current affairs and helped firm up my political/ideological beliefs.

[SSOWorld]

I was at my work when another coworker had said "Trade center's on fire".  I shrugged it off at first but when a second co-worker turned up a radio and I heard consistent news, then seeing TVs on with the coverage in both the conference room and library, that was when it hit.  Many of my co-workers put down their production and watched the tv for quite some time and I called a couple people, one of which never realized what was going on.

AgentSteel53 - your quote resemble's Agent K's quote in Men in Black:

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

[nyratk1]

Seeing all these people post about how they were in school or (gasp) in single digits age-wise makes me think this is a pretty young crowd. You all are a bunch of young pups and I'm the resident old fart.

I'm glad you said that because I was worrying I'm getting old as I'm starting to see some of my friends go bald.

[allniter89]

Seeing all these people post about how they were in school or (gasp) in single digits age-wise makes me think this is a pretty young crowd. You all are a bunch of young pups and I'm the resident old fart.

Anyway, I was at work listening to the radio and getting ready to put out a weekly newspaper (and wondering what we were going to have for news that week since it had been a slow news week in Powell County, Ky.) when I heard the report of a plane crashing into one of the towers. I dismissed it as an accident. One of the females working there had a nosy granny who called her at the drop of a hat so she was on the phone with her grandmother who was watching everything on TV. We had no TV in our office. When I heard the second plane had it, I knew it was no accident. Then the subsequent reports came in about the Pentagon and the Flight 93 crash.

We lived in Winchester at the time and my wife was design editor/senior staff writer for the daily paper there, so she had a busy day with getting the latest news in the afternoon paper. She got home on time and told me that I wouldn't want to watch the day's events on TV. I had a much longer day since I was doing all layout and production as well as writing, but I got home late that night and got to see some of the coverage.

Turns out that 9/11 ended up being our big news for the week, but not in the way you might think. Our publisher did not want state or national news on the front page because, he said, there are other sources for that and our newspaper was the only place to get local coverage. The county fair was going on that week and the night's activities were suspended. I think it was more out of fear than out of respect, although why anyone would think that Stanton and Clay City, Ky. and the Powell County Fair would be a target for terrorists is beyond me. The cancellation of the fair's activities on Sept. 11 was our big story for the week.

Prior to that day, the "I remember when..." moments for me were the moon landing and Nixon's resignation. And I have to say, as an aside, that the aftermath of 9/11 got me much more interested in politics and current affairs and helped firm up my political/ideological beliefs.

I might be a equal contender for the old fart position (dob 3/17/53). I too was surprised at the responses in this post, so many "I was in school posts".
Probably just a brain fart on your part, but you didn't mention the JFK assassination in your "I remember whens". My "I remember where I was" moments are JFK (5th grade, sent home from school early), moon landing (roadtrip to Alaska, in MN at THE moment), 9/11 and John Lennon assassination (spent day moving into new apt, this was 1st thing I saw when I plugged in tv).
I remember RFK and MLK assassinations also but can't place exactly where I was when I heard but I was pretty young.