I was working at a federal government installation in Maryland. I had just arrived at work, sat down, logged in, the first thing I looked at was the Straight Dope Message Boards: right here is how I learned of the first plane crash a few minutes after it happened. To get home to Virginia when work was called off for everyone in the DC area at once, if I’d taken the American Legion Bridge, I would have been sitting there in bumper-to-bumper traffic until midnight. So I took the back roads through Frederick County to Route 15 at Point-of-Rocks, the next bridge over the Potomac, and got home quicker by taking the long way around. Made me glad to have learned geography and map reading.
Though the internet went down that day, in its place people were speaking directly to strangers all sharing the same experience at once.