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Friday, September 11, 2015

ANNIVERSARY OF NINE-ELEVEN

JFK+50:  Volume 5, No. 1710

TERROR STRUCK AMERICA 14 YEARS AGO TODAY

New York City (JFK+50) Fourteen years ago, at 8:46 a.m. Tuesday, September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center* in New York City.

Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m.United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower.   At 9:37 a.m.American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. followed at 10:03 a.m. by a fourth passenger airliner, United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field near Shanksville in Western Pennsylvania.

The four airliners had been hijacked by Islamic terrorists who smuggled box cutters on board the planes and disabled the crews.  The Federal Aviation Administration was notified at 8:32 a.m. of the hijacking of American Flight 11. They reported this information to NORAD which scrambled 2 F15s from Otis AFB at 8:53 a.m.  Additional fighters were dispatched from Langley AFB in Virginia at 9:30 a.m.

Later, a 9-11 Commission issued a report saying the attacks were carried out by members of the Muslim fundamentalist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda and that there were failures on the part of the United States in "imagination, policy, capabilities and management."  

At 9:59, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed and 29 minutes later, at 10:28, the North Tower also collapsed.

President George W. Bush, visiting an elementary school in Florida, was informed of the attacks and soon was back aboard Air Force OneThe President speaking at 9:00  p.m. from the White House said...

"Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundations of America.  These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve."

2977 people were killed as a result of the terrorist attacks of 9-11-01 in addition to the 19 hijackers.  90% of the casualties at the WTC included those people who were at or above the point of impact of the Twin Towers.

At 10:14 a.m. Eastern Time, during NBC-TV coverage of the event, Tom Brokaw described 9-11-2001 as "the most serious attack on the United States in more than a hundred years."  Brokaw went on to say that no horrific event in our history could match this one.


UA Flight 175 Crashes Into WTC
September 11, 2001
Photo by upstateNYer



*World Trade Center (1973-2001) was a complex of buildings in Manhattan, NYC which included the Twin Towers and five other structures.  The Towers were designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the lead architect. 

On a typical workday, 50,000 people worked in the WTC and there would be 200,000 visitors.  When the WTC opened on April 3, 1973, the TTs were the tallest buildings in the world.