It was my 19th birthday and my birthday has been the suck every year since.
It’s six hours ahead of New York here, so it happened early-afternoon our time. I was sitting in the homework room at my school - I was in the ninth grade, and school finished at 2:30 but my mother couldn’t pick me up until 4:30 - and my Afrikaans teacher came in at about 3 o’clock, and said that he’d heard from someone that a plane had crashed into a building in New York. He asked if I could help him with the computer in the staff-room, because he was having trouble getting through to the news websites. We managed to get to the CNN website, and when we saw the magnitude of what had happened the teacher called in all the other students who were hanging around to tell them what had happened.
A little while later I was walking across the school parking lot with a friend, “C”, who had a reputation for telling tall stories. We ran into the school librarian, and I babbled somewhat incoherently about the news. She asked, “Did C tell you this?” in a disbelieving tone of voice. I near-shrieked, “No! It’s on CNN!”
When I went home, of course we turned on CNN and just sat watching all evening. It sounds trivial, but it vividly sticks in my mind that that week was the only time in my childhood that my parents let us eat dinner in front of the TV.
I’m from Germany and on 9/11 2001 I was 11 years old and just had my first day on secondary school. Since Germany is 6 hours ahead of NYC time it was about 15:00 (03.00pm) over here when it all happened.
My mom had taken me to the next town to buy office stuff for me, pencils, paper, notebooks, etc and we were back in our car heading home when the music on the radio suddenly was interrupted by a “breaking news” bulletin. The announcer said something that made my mom gasp and turn the volume up. At the age of 11 I didn’t pay much attention to what was being said but I started to when I noticed how my mom was reacting to it.
I asked her what the problem was and she said something about a plane having hit the WTC in NYC. I didn’t know what that was and didn’t of course understand the significance of the whole thing.
As soon as we went home my mom switched on the TV and we were glued at the TV set for the rest of the day. My mom was crying in front of the TV and when my dad, who is a banker, came home he said that all the stocks in Frankfurt had fallen. Only then did I slowly realize the enormity of the whole thing.
All channels were full of it for weeks and weeks. Eventually, it caused me nightmares.
Today I’m quite interested in the whole topic which is why I try to research about it as much as possible. Doing researches, you automatically stumble upon a lot of alternative views on the whole event - a lot of conspiracy theories and views and although I’m basically not a fan of speculations, I must say that some of them are quite plausible and convincing which just leaves me in a state of confusion of what the truth might be nowadays.
Welcome to the SDMB.
We have hashed out the idea of “what really happened” pretty thoroughly on the SDMB. The truth is that Osama bin Laden convinced nineteen people (originally twenty but one chickened out) to hijack four airplanes. Two were crashed into the North and South towers of the WTC, one crashed into the Pentagon, and another (Flight 093) crashed after resisting the hijackers.
Feel free to do some searches. Popular Mechanics did a good job of covering the standard 911 myths.
People who buy or push conspiracy theories about 911 are known as Truthers on the SDMB. We have had a few, but they don’t typically last long, as they bring out the best and the worst in the collection of smart-asses that makes up the SDMB.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - on 911 I was at work, when someone who worked for me told me that our client had been hit by a plane. We turned on CNN in time to see the second plane hit the South tower, and I did not know for almost two weeks if the guy I reported to in NYC was alive or dead.
I decided to post before reading.
It was Tuesday, the second week of my first year teaching. I got to school early and was reading the Straight Dope to burn a little time before the kids arrived. There was a thread in the Pit about the World Trade Center and Osama bin Laden. I started reading it, confused, because the bombing there was eight years in the past, but the first post was from that morning, and it was burning with rage. I think I tried to pull up a news site, and each one I tried timed out. Very bad sign. So, I turned on the classroom TV and turned it to CNN.
The first tower had already collapsed. I saw the second one go.
I called my dad and told him what was going on, then I went to the school office, which happened to also be the district office. No one else had heard, so I ended up telling everyone else.
By then, the kids had arrived, and classes were starting, but we really didn’t do any teaching. We just kept the tvs on and watched. Most of the kids (eighth graders) had no real comprehension of what was happening or just how bad it was. A few of them were delighted to get out of classwork. Some of them were scared that something would happen where we were. So, I spent time explaining that, no, the terrorists were not going to come to our town, that, yes, a lot of people had just died, that it was probably bin Laden and the Taliban, that they were in Afghanistan which was not a stable country, Pakistan was our ally, that most Muslims were just people - some good, some bad, mostly a lot like us - and they were more on our side than bin Laden’s.
I stayed glued to the threads on the Straight Dope, as New York dopers checked in, as Canadian, European, and dopers of other lands offered us their heartfelt sympathy, love, and support. I think if the boards had not been here, I would have taken it much worse. Mostly, I remember feeling numb and shaky and very, very lonely.
Surprised I’m not here somewhere.
It was a typical day for me at the Pentagon until a damn plane crashed into my office.
I was at work, a half mile from the Pentagon. Our windows faced the river so we didn’t really see anything.
Pretty sure there’s a post around here in which I recounted my long walk home that day.
Actually, it was one of his subordinates. Forgot the guy’s name.
The one day I didn’t watch the morning news. Heard a report when I switched to NPR at a long traffic light. They were talking about how the WTC was… gone. Wut?
I called my wife the second I got to work. She answered the phone “We’re under attack!” as she had turned on the news. Went home after about an hour.
I was with my older son, three at the time, visiting my parents in Tennessee. It was the morning we were heading back home to the DC area. I came into my parents’s house, and the first tower had been hit. I wasn’t able to get in touch with my wife, who was here with our one year old. I left without having talked to her. I decided to drive through DC instead of taking the Beltway, since I thought it could be closed in places. Most of the people I saw on the street were law enforcement personnel. It was a long six hours driving home.
I had just returned from a business trip the day before, so I got a late start that day. I was working at home at the time.
At about 9AM, I went to the home office and I had no internet. I turned on the TV and there was nothing but white noise.
So I called the cable company and had a surreal conversation with this kind of nasty guy who treated me like some sort of idiot because I didn’t know what was going on. He seemed astounded that I would expect TV and Internet because I lived in NYC and advised me to “turn on the radio or something” - my neighbors with other cable providers had no service interruptions,BTW.
I did have phone service so I made some calls, assuring my family out-of-state that I was OK, confirmed that my boyfriend was OK ( He occasionally serviced some of the lighting at Windows On the World and would usually go at 7AM ). He was safe at home. I checked in with some friends then got in the car and drove around a bit because my car had a radio and I was in a weird state of shock. Then I stopped and picked up some groceries - nothing crazy except lots of ice cream. I did see people in full emergency mode, filling multiple carts with water and staples.
When I got home the TV and internet was back and I got caught up. The next week was really strange - I spent most of Sept 12th hanging out in an Irish bar on the Upper East Side - it was packed and CNN was on the TV’s instead of ESPN. Occasionally armed military personnel would wander in and out and the wind had shifted so the air smelled like burning steel.
The next day I lost it with a clueless client, the personal assistant of some rich woman. I went to checkout a problem in her home and determined that I needed a part from Utah and told the assistant that I couldn’t get the part that week - it would have to ship ground because of the “no-fly” thing. She got all crazy with me and told me her boss was flying back from South Africa that day so I HAD to have a fix. and I went off on her and told her that her boss was NOT flying back from Africa that day and gave her a few choice words about her absolute cluelessness.
Maybe your client wasn’t clueless. Maybe she was just in a major state of shock. Like a lot of people were that week.
Thank you very much, Shodan, and a warm “hello” to all the other members on here!
Well, I did not intend to offend anyone on here by saying that I had come across a lot of “alternative points of views” on this topic. Although I was only 11 at the time, this incident mysteriously has kept me interested ever since. I have been collecting as much of the German news coverage of that day as possible and dealing with this matter more thoroughly, you cannot avoid coming across some conspiracies (as it is with every major incident). Like I said in my first posting, I’m actually not a fan of wild un-proven speculations, but some of the points made in those conspiracy theories seem like justified questions - for example how such a terrible thing could have happened with all the intelligence and secret service systems suddenly failing to detect anything. I mean, an incident of this scale does not simply happen over night. I can imagine it must have been planned for a very LONG time beforehand.
I hope you guys don’t get me wrong here, I’m not trying to bash the U.S. or anyone, I’m just a bit confused and unsure as to what I should believe.
I looked for those alternative threads on here, as you pointed it out to me, Shodan, but wasn’t successfull. If someone could share a link that’d be awesome 
By the way, although I was only 11 when it happened, but one thing has been stuck in my mind ever since and that’s the really emotional and emphatic way a German news anchor did the live coverage that day for almost 24 hours non-stop. When the planes hit you could hear he was seconds away from crying. You could hear it in the voice.
Later that year he was awarded with a media prize for the best and longest live-coverage.
We were all seconds away from crying. This coming from Canada. It was horrific.
No need for conspiracy theories; the truth was hard enough.
It was about 06:00, and as usual; I had the news on the TV while I read SDMB.
I mis-typed ‘727’ when describing the size of the airplane. It was post 24 where I corrected myself, saying ‘737’. Turns out the planes involved were 757s and 767s, but on a small TV screen they all look the same to me. (If they were General Aviation planes, I’d do much better. A Cessna Skyhawk, and I might even be able to tell you the specific model. 
)
I was in Asia at the time. As I was going to sleep (it was around 9 PM), someone told me that an airplane had just hit the World Trade Center. In my mind, I pictured a small prop plane, like a Cessna. I drifted off to sleep.
The next morning it was all over the news.
I was pulling into the office parking lot, listening to the Tony Bruno (sports talk radio) show. The big sports story that weekend was the possibility of Michael Jordan coming out of retirement to play for the Wizards, which was the #1 topic on the TB show. As I was pulling in, Tony said
“CNN is now interrupting their wall-to-wall Michael Jordan coverage to bring us pictures of a building on fire.”
bit of a zombie thread so I had to check if I responded before.
I was at work in the operations center of a freight company. Got a call from someone from the last shift that a “small plane had hit the WTC”. Having just reviewed the weather I knew it was “severe clear” in NY. My response was that you can’t accidentally hit the tallest building on a clear day. It was a deliberate act.
By some quirk of fate I ended up flying right seat that night to move supplies to NYC. None of the radar centers would answer our call sign so we had to call back to the last center and have them land-line call. The only response we got was from a local airport accidentally dialed in. They were quite animated about it as I remember it. The whole venture turned out to be a waste of time.
The weird thing about all of it is that for 10 years prior to 9/11 I had a recurring dream that I flew packages in my plane after a war was started. The dream made no sense at all.
I was leaving my apartment building to go in to work when the janitor told me that a plane had hit a big building in New York. He couldn’t tell me which building or any more details.
I drove past the US Embassy on my way to work and saw that there was tons of security around it. I didn’t connect that with the crash in New York, though.
When I got to work, I found everyone gathered around a TV in an office and saw the WTC towers on fire.
I immediately started trying to call New York, because I knew my brother had been working in WTC 7 up until a few months before. I wasn’t entirely sure where he was working. Of course, it was completely impossible to get through to New York.
I finally reached my sister-in-law in upstate New York, who was able to tell me everyone was safe. (My brother was working a few blocks away on Wall Street. He came out of the WTC subway stop after the first plane hit. Since he had to go in to work, he left before the second came in. He wasn’t released from the office until the afternoon, when he had to walk about 40 blocks to where the subways were still operating. My mother had gone on a senior citizens’ day trip to Atlantic City and was stuck there until the evening. In the next few days, two of my other brothers who worked for New York City transit and the Department of Sanitation worked on the start of the cleanup.)
I eventually went home and spent the rest of the day glued to the TV.
I found out by reading the SDMB. I saw a thread titled something like “Terrorist attack on the WTC” and thought “That’s old news”, thinking it was about the bombing in the basement some years earlier. Then I read it, and was very confused until I figured out it was a new attack.
As for what I did? I taught a couple of labs, like I was scheduled to. Life goes on. And, of course, I saw the same nonstop, continually-looping coverage that everyone else did, on big TVs they wheeled into the student union.
I was driving to work and listening to news. I got hear some of it unfold over the radio as I drove. By then, they were starting to ask the planes in flight to radio in, and were narrowing in on how many planes might still be in flight.
Got to work where we all watched TV or Internet reports.
My uncle reported out, via my aunt, that the plane hit the Pentagon shortly (10 minutes or so) before he was due for a meeting there.
I learned, once flight numbers were released, that a friend’s brother was on the fourth plane. We had been hoping that in the chaos his plane would be found, safe.
Yes, one can cry a long time later.