I believe that Nava lives in – or near – Pamplona (in Navarre / Navarra / Nafarroa ), the principal site of the festival of San Fermin, best known worldwide for the Running of the Bulls. Although the festival runs for more than a week, the actual feast day of San Fermin is July 7. This was also the date of the 2005 London Underground bombings, and I would imagine that Nava’s post was intended to play up the fact that Al-Qaida does not seem to choose dates that have local significance.
[Backtracking to 9-11: IIRC, they chose a Tuesday because that was apparently when they saw the flights had fewest passengers, so they can’t have selected 9-11 purely based on its importance as a “911” date].
Interesting. I live in New York and listen to newsradio and talk radio broadcasting from NYC.
I only hear it said as " Nine-Eleven ". Nobody in their right mind would broadcast the phrase, " nine-one-one " over again for the same reasons that you don’t say, " mayday mayday mayday mayday " over the air.
It can be confused for something else. Never have I heard anyone refer to it as " the events of nine-one-one" or " the attacks of nine-one-one ".
I’m not doubting you at all, I’m just pointing up the fact that in the city where it happened, few if any people refer to it in the manner that you hear talk radio people refer to it. If they are broadcasting from New York City, then clearly SOME folks call it that. I’ve never heard it as such.
We’ll cope. IIRC, we one upon a time had ‘the Gulf War’ faught between Iran and Iraq. This became the ‘first Gulf War’ to distinguish it from the new one. Now these seem to be the ‘Iran-Iraq war’ and the ‘Persian Gulf war’.
Calling this event by the date “9/11” is also confusing and weird because in most of the world this date means November 9, which is also the Night of the Breaking Glass, arguably the beginning of the Holocaust.
I’ve never heard of anyone making that connection before! “9/11” is routinely used in the UK, and there’s no confusion because it’s not seen as a reference to a date, but to particular events on a specific day in 2001.
Uh… this is embarrasing, but I wasn’t sure how to spell Kristallnacht. But I have heard of it referred to by the English name, and not just as an explanation.
And the actual military name for the Normandy invasion was Operation Overlord, which does not seem to be the common/popular way to describe June 6th invasion.
But doesn’t D-Day refer to the first day of the actual invasion, whereas Operation Overlord also includes the preparations, and the subsequent days of landings and battles?
A radio station I listened to that day incorrectly reported that the significance of the date was related to the Camp David Accords
I think the day was chosen as it was probably one of the lightest travel days of the year. Look at how few people were on the flights. It was a Tuesday, after the end of the summer travel season.
