September 11 2001

[bdw]

Seeing as it's the noughties equivalent of the JFK/Princess Di moments, where were you when you found out about the attacks?

I was on Easter Island. Thanks to my tenuous grasp of the Spanish language, I was under the impression that a bomb had gone off in the United Airlines offices at the top of the WTC. Had been up one of the towers not eight weeks before.

[eagle]

I was in my room at home, and got a phone call from a mate telling me to turn on the news.

[theshadowhost]

I had just started 6th form and one the way home some guy told me about it.

i was like "the world what center?? is that some kind of giant farmers market or stock exchange??"

ignorance is bliss!

[hr]

[orudge]

My neighbour/swimming teacher was taking me home from the after-school swimming club, and said that apparently there had been some sort of an incident in New York. Didn't think much of it until I got home and saw it on the news.

[hr]

http://www.owenrudge.net/
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[Thalia]

I found out when I got home from school. Think i was in history class when it actually happened.

[hr]

You've been nothing but an angel every day of your life and now you wonder what it's like to be damned...

[queen of scots]

I was staying with my parents - it was the summer between finishing MA and starting my MLitt I think - and it came on the tv after the lunchtime Neighbours.

[hr]

Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.

IMAGE:www.boarhills.f2s.com/ff.gif

http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37100070

[Haunted]

I found out when my mate texted me a joke
"Have you heard of burger kings' new meal deal? Two flaming towers and a crumblng big apple!"

I didn't get it so texted back and was told to watch tv.

[hr]

Now with 100% more corn

[Raindance]

At home. Turned on the TV. Thought for ten minutes that I was watching an alternative history documentary. Watched with morbid fascination as events unfolded. Went to work at six. Had to endure all manner of ignorant, small-town people telling me it was 'unreal'.

Went to bed. Freaked out every time an airplane passed over my house.

[hr]

I'm only here because b3ta is broken.

[liliputian]

I was on my way home from sixth form when a friend texted me "Did you hear about the planes that hit the WTC?" and I patiently awaited the punch line until I finally reached my house where my mum was watching the TV agog, nearly burning the clothes she was ironing and I realised it wasn't a joke. Oops.

[hr]

i know you want the sin but not the sinner...

http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37100186

[novium]

I woke up to it. It was hazy, because for the first few minutes after my alarm clock went off, I was half-asleep, half-dreaming. The morning show host was saying something about airplanes, and the white house... at first, half-dreaming, I thought she was talking about some movie. But unusually, she was speaking in low tones and there were undertones of tension and dread. Disbelief. That's what finally woke me up.

It was unreal. So unreal. I am not a morning person, and so to hear about it in the haze of just waking... that no one knew what the hell was going on, that there were reports of the white house on fire, that a tower had collapsed. I didn't even know what the WTC was. What was it in context? What did it mean?
And so I stumbled out to the living room, thinking that if I could just get online, it'd all be explained, it'd all make sense...but there wasn't anything. A few lines, less than even the radio had. I turned on TV and watched the second tower fall.

The rest of the day is just fragments. Very very clear fragments, but everything else just blurs into the week.

[hr]

Neither the storms of crisis, nor the breezes of ambition could ever divert him, either by hope or by fear, from the course that he had chosen

[Gubbins]

My dad told me, having just come back from selling eggs while I was two-feet deep in chicken faeces. I think my reaction was: "Oh." I can't say it surprised me.

[hr]

...then again, that is only my opinion.

[Bizarre Atheist]

I was walking back from a rugby match when my mum texted me, including the original casulaty estimate of -get this- 50,000. I thought she was trying to pull off a very bad joke...

[hr]

[Hennessy]

I was on my way home from school on study leave and was standing at a bus-stop when I saw my Dad's car and waved him down. He picked me up and before I could say anything he told me to be quiet and turned the radio up. That's how I heard.

Got back just in time to see the first jumpers hurl themselves out of the windows. Then I had dinner, watched endless looped reports on all channels, and went to bed.

[hr]

The Sinner.
"Apologies in advance for pedantry."

[Nymphomanic]

I heard about it on the school bus. They said 'we have cancelled todays whatever (some concert or something) out of respect for the lives lost in America). I asked the bus driver what happened and he just turned the radio off and was like 'it's nothing'. Looking back I think he did it because there were some quite small kids on the bus.

When I got off the bus I saw the man next door walking his dog and I asked what was going on because by then I was convinced it must be pretty serious. He told me that the twin towers had been knocked down by planes and I said 'Oh, was anybody hurt?' - stupid question but at the time it seemed natural to ask. It was horrible to watch on tv and see everyone so tense and waiting for something else to happen, so eventually we just turned it off and went for a walk and tried to talk about other stuff for the rest of the evening.

[hr]

I read most of the night and go south in winter - wasteland

[Timata]

On way home from school - mum is a teacher so had to go to her school for her to drive me home, and the caretaker had the news on one of those heavy duty TVs they have in primary schools. Went home, parents insisted on watching endless repeats of news on the TV in the kitchen, while I watched the usual star trek scheduled on BBC 2 (I think it was a Wednesday, and I think it was ST:DS9)

[justjump]

I was in history class (3rd year of high school) when it happened. We were discussing the causes of WWI and I can still remember the exact moment....my teacher said "Nobody expected the assasinations, nobody knew where they would lead. You can never know what´s happening in the world right now that might change history."¨I looked at the clock to check the time - 2pm UK time.
Of course I didn´t know until after school what had happened. I was listening to the radio in drama class and couldn´t understand why all the DJs were being so serious. It wasn´t until I got home that it really made sense.

[Power Metal Dom]

After watching a tape of some Simpsons episodes I randomly flicked on the news and saw the smoke billowing out of the first tower but at this point they didn't know what had happened. I thought it was simply a fire that had gotten out of hand. Then to my utter disbelief watched live on tv as the second plane hit. I thought it was just an unusually low flying aircraft and expected it to pass behind the tower and disappear to the right of the screen. I called my mother and we both stood there as the whole tragic day unfolded.

[hr]

Like flames on fuel...upon metal I drool

[LonelyPilgrim]

I was at home, asleep when the attacks happened. I woke up and turned on CNN, as part of my morning ritual, just after the first tower fell. I was set to fly Scotland for the fresher's orientation on the 13th. Obviously that didn't go as planned.

[hr]

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. --Giacomo Casanova

[KayBee]

In Comet shopping for a TV for my mate to take down to her new flat in Carlisle where she went to uni. We walked into the store to be confronted by the burning tower on every tv in the place. At the time no one really knew what had happened, when the second plane hit it was really odd. I can still recall the image of it repeated over and over again on every screen...

Strangely enough my mate lost the urge to buy a TV and we drove home listening to the radio in silence.

[schmod]

Quoting Bizarre Atheist from 19:26, 11th Sep 2008
I was walking back from a rugby match when my mum texted me, including the original casulaty estimate of -get this- 50,000. I thought she was trying to pull off a very bad joke...

[hr]

That was the listed capacity of the two buildings.

The fact that the evacuations got as many people out as they did is an absolute miracle. It could have been much, much worse.