I almost lost my father at the Pentagon when it happened. I feel such a douche for not making it a big deal on this day. :(

I was in Navy Boot Camp when the towers fell... I can't TELL you how scared I was that we were going to war.

I was on my way into Manhattan when the first plane hit. Got stranded on the George Washington Bridge and saw the second plane hit. 97 people I knew died that day. 8 years later, it still feels like just yesterday.

the Hoover dam was inaugurated today, Roosevelt turned on it's turbines in 1934 on this day

I remember the day, I was on my day off and received a call from the base saying not to go anywhere, I asked what was up being I'd had just woken up. They said they couldn't say, just turn to CNN. When I tuned in, it was a close up, I couldn't Identifie the building then it fell, they pulled back on the zoom, then I said "oh my god!" I called the base and said I was coming in. It was a very long day. And a very sad one.

I can't watch programs like that. Whenever anything in a documentary is related to that day -- the planes hitting, the towers falling -- I burst into tears. I did know someone who died that day (in an off-handed way, not really personally) and my uncle worked in one of the buildings surrounding the WTC (he was in England at the time), but I still don't know why it effects me so much.

I think it was a show I saw on one of the History/Learning/Discovery channels, or even possibly the news, not that long after it happened. It had two different bits of footage that haunts my nightmares: one of the second plane hitting the tower, filmed from underneath it. The other, after the planes had hit, of people (and news reporters) on the ground reporting that people were jumping...and the sound of the jumpers hitting the ground. That...is a sound I would like to never hear again.

Same here. If I watch, I cry. I think what gets me is that these are innocent people. These aren't soldiers, fanatics or willing martyrs. These were everyday people who didn't ask to be on the frontlines of a war they didn't even know was going on.

I was in Missouri when it happened and within an hour a Major was knocking on my door ordering me to stand by for recall to active duty.... Luckily they didn't but I knew the senarios they was planning to do......

I was watching that this morning.

All I recall was turning on CNN (or some other news channel) and seeing live and uncensored reactions.

A reported asked a guy in a car how he felt about what was going on and he said (and I quote):

"There's people fallin' out of the sky. How the fuck do you think I feel."

That's when I knew that something really crazy was going down.

I remember that when I first heard it, I thought it was some kind of publicity stunt. I mean, come on... planes crashing into skyscrapers? That crap happened in movies, not the real world.

Then I went online and found about a thousand e-mails asking, "My God! Are you okay? You don't live near that field in PA, do you?"

Then I went home and saw it on the news and it finally sank in.

I was...what, 10 at the time? I remember getting to school, someone saying "two jets hit the World Trace Center in New York"...I really didn't know what was going on. We all were sent home, and I just...watched. I don't remember which station, but I sat in front of the tube with my sister, watched the towers collapse...Like I said, I really didn't know what was going on, but whatever it was, it felt important.

A lot of the grisly details (like the jumpers) were kept from me; I found out about them myself watching documentaries years later.

At least it gives a nice break from their usual re-runing of Monster Hunters and the same five "Nostradamus/2012" documentaries every day.

I remember coming into class on that day, wondering why everyone was crowding around the TV. I remember naively thinking skinheads were the guys behind the attacks...

History Channel's become next to unwatchable these days really, if it's not Hitler and WW2, then it's non-history-related stuff like Ice Road Truckers or endless 2012 doomsday propaganda.

so like today in the news it wasn't a lot of 9/11 but there sure was a lot about how Joe Wilson's opponent down there in SC just got like a million bux in new donations in the past day thanks to wilson's outburst at the president's address. I guess time heals all wounds 8)

I was caught "in transit" in Los Angeles travelling from London to Wellington (via Portland OR). I went out to catch my flight to Portland at LAX first thing in the morning to see massive confusion at the airport, at first I just thought "this is what LAX is like first thing in the morning" but then I was told that all flights were cancelled and I had to get on the shuttle bus back to the hotel I'd just checked out of. Watched the WTC towers collapse live on the bar TV along with several dozen other stunned onlookers...

Any thoughts I had of going to Portland were rapidly transformed into getting home - had to wait three days in LA before the airport opened again, then a further two before getting a flight home via Rarotonga and Auckland. Thank god the company I was working for had said "Don't worry about costs or anything, just make sure you're safe and we'll sort stuff out when you get home."

Seeing LAX completely shut down for three days and nights was downright eerie...

That why my honor of the World Trace Center in New York City, Where I live in Manhattan. Damn it near my home so my luck.
I am alway stong god bless of the United States American!

One of my mom's best friends from college was on Flight 93: Linda Gronlund. Mom still has a picture of Linda in her office.

I was in high school in 2001. That morning I was in Phys Ed, and the class was walking outside to play football, when one of my friends mentioned that he heard that someone had crashed a plane into the Pentagon. We all kind of chuckled about it, 'cause we thought it was an Internet joke, but after we got back inside and on to our next classes, we realized it was no joke.

I was freaking out a little, 'cause my mom worked at an international airport at the time (BWI), but she called the school and someone came to my class to make sure I knew she was OK. Overall it was pretty surreal.

I don't need the History channel to remind me. All I have to do is think about my birthday and how it's only 4 days after 9/11.

Everytime I look at an old movie with the WTC in it.

Everytime I see or hear of New York City.

Everytime I think about the war on terror.

Everytime I know someone heading into that war.

And everytime I look at the American flag waving in the breeze somewhere.

It haunts my dreams and thoughts when it gets closer.

You know what really gets me is that I know there are some independent polls going around asking people if 9/11 should be made into a national holiday.

I'm going to say no on that one. Is it a day that's going to live on in history? YES! Yes it is, and for very good reason!

But I don't think it's a day to constantly be remembering all the way until the end of the country (which will probably be the day the Earth is evacuated so the population can move to other planets and prevent the super nova from destroying it all.)

We have Veteran's Day, and we have Memorial Day, but 9/11 was a tragedy and not something we want to remember. We don't recognize the day the White House was burned down during the War of 1812. We don't recognize the day where the Challenger exploded. Not even when JFK was assassinated do we recognize those days.

So why should we recognize this one? I'm not saying we should forget. I say there be a monument of some kind at Ground Zero, and personally, I'd like to see the Towers rebuilt. For one, it will complete the NY skyline again, and it'll be a great big raspberry to the Al-Qaida and show them that we can rebuild anything they knock over. I just don't think it needs to be a day where we constantly remember it 50 years down the line.

I may get a lot of heat from this, but that's how I feel about it. It was a great tragedy, and a significant moment in history, but I don't want to be reminded of it every year again and again like it's happening all over again. I want to advance and move on.

~Otaku-Man

We have a Pearl Harbor Day!?

~Otaku-Man

I agree that 9/11 shouldn't be a Federal holiday. Those have been and should continue to be for positive things, such as the end of wars and declarations of freedom. A day of remembrance, yes, but not a holiday.

If you want a Patriot's Day, find a positive event to mark. Or re-name Armistice / Veterans' Day (November 11).

Although in some ways I think there should be one Federal holiday per month, with rather even spacing.

I was at our cabin at Lake Tahoe with my youngest brother and my Mother.

First I was stunned; Then angry.

It was then I truly understood the anger my grandparents and a great uncle (who flew B-24's in WWII) had felt on December 7th.

Ever since then I've appreciated my republic, its history and its honor more than ever; and for anyone (foreign and domestic) that tries to stomp on that... Don't Tread On Me!

I didn't watch much about the 9-11 stuff, until now that I'm watching MSNBC' As It happened thing. I'll always remember when this happened, since I was actually picked up from school early that day from fifth grade, because I was sick that day. And so, that morning I was ate home watching the news coverage while getting up and running to the bathroom nearly every ten minutes.

I remember getting up and getting to work on board the ship I was assigned to at the time(USS Austin LPD 4). We were in the shipyards and I had just come back up from the number 2 engine room to get some tools I needed to start on a new job and my boss bust into the lab and says "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!" We turn on the small TV we keep in there and tune to CNN. We spend the next several minutes trying to guess what kind of plane it was and if it got lost, mechanical error. I remember thinking, "It doesn't look that bad." Then the 2nd plane shows up. Conversation dies down. From the camera angle, the first tower hit was obscuring the impact site of the second tower. We see the plane disappear behind the first tower and a roiling orange fireball come out the side of the second. At that moment we all realized what had happened, and that a line had been drawn between now and 2 minutes ago, and the world had suddenly changed so much in so little time. We all knew nothing would ever be the same for us again.

I was out of school and wasn't working at the time. I woke up to my mom coming in saying "turn the TV on, something's happening at the World Trade Center, a plane hit it." I turned it on and about 30 seconds later the second plane hit. Needless to say I was *fucking* awake after that...

Also my brother was working in the NBC warehouse at the time. They were right across a river of some sort and saw it all, and even that distance away they had papers and ashes and shit landing around x__x

I was woken up by my little brother returning home early from school. He said The teacher was going on about planes hitting the towers. For some reason we didn't have power, so I went and grabbed a portable TV and plugged it into the bout outside. I was shocked until I saw the second tower hit. just kinda went numb. I called dad and he told me to not worry, and my brother was chomping at the bit... he is national guard and he felt helpless way out in Illinois.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday.

I was between jobs at that time, and had gone through some problems of my own during that year. Living on the west coast, by the time I woke up, both towers had already been hit, and I recall the Pentagon had been hit just shortly after I got up to watch what was happening. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the first tower falling.

I watched some of that MSNBC as-it-happened special tonight, but I switched it off because it was starting to get too depressing.

Anyone watching this live on TV recalls hearing that the employees in Tower 1 were being instructed by building security to go back up … and return to work. That bullshit stopped with the second strike, but it still cost lives. Everyone involved in that decision to send folks back up into a burning building should be tortured and executed slowly, live on Pay-Per-View, as a Public Television fundraiser. What do you think?

I was in the middle of a dream involving Angelina Jole and a bottle of chocolate syrup when something woke me right up. I couldn't find anything in my room, so I went downstairs and turned on the news, then went into the kitchen to get some coffee. with mocha-java in had I went back out in the living room to see one of the WTC towers on fire.

I remember thinking at the time "aw darn, what a shame..." Just a moment before the second plane hit live on CNN.

Hard to believe it's been 8 years since that dark day.

I’m starting to think the date September 11 is cursed.

Believe it or not, Hurricane Iniki hit Hawai’i on September 11, 1992, nine years prior to the terror attacks on the exact same date.

I don't know what's worse, the actual event happening or how so many seem to have forgotten about it.

9/11 is our generation's Pearl Harbor.

But then again this isn't the only tragic shit to happen on that day, you know? We just make a big deal out of it because we're used to the violence being home-grown and gun related.

I can remember it vividly. My boss came in and told me and I turned on the radio and Howard Stern was on and he was talking to an eye witness. About that time the second plane hit. I went upstairs and turned on the tv and saw the carnage. My first thought was 'They better get clear of that thing because its coming down' though I didn't expect it to fall completely perfectly down the way it did. Just surreal as someone else said. Another weird thing was the following week with no flights. No con trails in the sky. I was 44 at the time and never saw that before. There were a few military aircraft now and then,mostly F-16's which I found very comforting.

Saw some of it. The music they used for it really made the experience more intense. That really give you an idea of what its was like.

I seen it but man it was very depressing, I started 6th grade when this happened.

I remember they played that documentary that was being filmed on one of the New York fire stations when 9/11 happened and it had the real footage of the fire fighters dealing with the towers, including the people jumping to their deaths.

It was pretty intense. Not sure they've played it again since they did on NBC.

I was working in Indianapolis. Since we weren't starting unti; about 9AM, I has been watching the ABC news, I saw it all as it unfolded. I called my Navy Reserve Center to let them know my location and what orders to expect. They told me to stay where I was at, but took down my cell phone number.

I went to work as I was supposed to the next three days and had to use the rental car to drive back home to Cleveland. I remember the panic buying of gasoline (and $5 a gallon prices for one afternoon), people expecting their building/shopping mall to be the next thing attacked, and an every man for himself mentality where I was.

When I got home, I unpacked my bags and started repacking for what I knew was going to happen. A month later, my orders came through and I was recalled to active duty.

9/11/1973 Salvador Allende (president of Chile)was murdered at the end of a military coup conducted by Augusto Pinochet with the support of american goverment. Follow the dots

Try working on a Military base. I only missed working that day since I don't work Fridays, though worked the next day (my B.Day)

as a european i can honestly go "and you didn't see this comming?" and feel good about it