| 25 years ago tomorrow 20:36 - Sep 10 with 1771 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
Who could forget! I remember the journey home from school and then being glued to sky news for 4 hours straight as a high schooler. No social media or smart phones but within an hour the world was fixed to their television.
I don't really think it sunk in the magnitude of the events at that age until reading about in more detail a few years later. The memorial museum is a fitting and well-done tribute.
Still the greatest loss of British life in a single terrorist event as well.
I find the calls on the documentaries tough to listen to. |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:40 - Sep 10 with 1636 views | LeoMuff |
I was just reading about Rick Rescorla just now, amazing life and saved lots of lives that day. [Post edited 10 Sep 20:45]
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:52 - Sep 10 with 1572 views | homer_123 |
Whilst I haven't forgotten...25 yrs....jeez. |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:55 - Sep 10 with 1564 views | Swansea_Blue |
There are only a few events that have been seared into my memory and that was one (the other main one was listening to our invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War on the radio while I was in my student digs wondering if it would escalate and we’d end up with conscription. And then the Falklands).
Just horrific scenes and I can still recall the shock of it playing out. We followed it in work somehow; it must have been on the radio as I doubt internet TV was a thing and it certainly wouldn’t have been at the place I was working at anyway as we didn’t have networked PCs. |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:57 - Sep 10 with 1561 views | Perublue |
Without this trying to sound ghoulish but I do remember a few years back being able to and indeed obviously doing so going back on this message board to that day and rereading the developing horror and disbelief as it happened.
I wasn’t on the board that day at anytime (I don’t think) but the world changed that day and those of my age mid 50’s and above know what I mean….the feeling of everything we knew before was no more. |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:01 - Sep 10 with 1535 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:57 - Sep 10 by Perublue |
Without this trying to sound ghoulish but I do remember a few years back being able to and indeed obviously doing so going back on this message board to that day and rereading the developing horror and disbelief as it happened.
I wasn’t on the board that day at anytime (I don’t think) but the world changed that day and those of my age mid 50’s and above know what I mean….the feeling of everything we knew before was no more. |
The individual stories are just horrific to read, the choices people had to make above the impact zone as well. | |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:02 - Sep 10 with 1521 views | bsw72 |
Was on the trade floor, lines to Cantor went down and then the tvs cut over. Next few days were manic, mixture of watching news and 12-14 hours in office, home, shower, sleep and repeat, still remember rigging up a 56k modem to dial into the Nymex backup servers for our guys to close positions. Seems like a bad dream looking back on it. A couple of colleagues who worked in our us HQ have subsequently died of cancer related to what they breathed in that day. Truly awful. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:05 - Sep 10 with 1476 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:02 - Sep 10 by bsw72 |
Was on the trade floor, lines to Cantor went down and then the tvs cut over. Next few days were manic, mixture of watching news and 12-14 hours in office, home, shower, sleep and repeat, still remember rigging up a 56k modem to dial into the Nymex backup servers for our guys to close positions. Seems like a bad dream looking back on it. A couple of colleagues who worked in our us HQ have subsequently died of cancer related to what they breathed in that day. Truly awful. |
Cantor Fitzgerald lost the most, I think.
A British company had a conference at the restaurant at the top as well.
I just walked by the HQ of the AON center in Chicago and it had 176 mini American flags out front, they had some of the upper floors on the South Tower. [Post edited 10 Sep 21:06]
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:10 - Sep 10 with 1424 views | bsw72 |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:05 - Sep 10 by Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
Cantor Fitzgerald lost the most, I think.
A British company had a conference at the restaurant at the top as well.
I just walked by the HQ of the AON center in Chicago and it had 176 mini American flags out front, they had some of the upper floors on the South Tower. [Post edited 10 Sep 21:06]
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My current company lost nearly 300, we have a memorial garden in our NY office. | | | |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:12 - Sep 10 with 1406 views | DecageBruce |
I was working at the Spa Pavilion in Felixstowe in the restaurant/bar earning my money just before heading of to Uni. As one of the eldest staff (yeah it was that well run) my job was to clear down the bar in the afternoon and stock up for any evening show once lunch time had stopped.
I distinctly remember switching the radio on (one of the reasons I chose to do the bar as you could listen) and the dj, I think Chris Moyles, stating that they weren’t doing their normal type show due to what was unfolding and described a bit. I remember walking up the restaurant and then into the theatre side and saying what id heard. Some people didn’t really react, one lady really reacted as had a family member working there.
It genuinely didn’t sink in for me as we had no tv to put it on, I had no access to Internet or office if anyone else was watching it. I didn’t finish work until 8 and got home to then see it all on tv and couldn’t believe what I was watching. Even listening on the radio didn’t do justice to what I saw once home |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:16 - Sep 10 with 1153 views | WicklowBlue |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:57 - Sep 10 by Perublue |
Without this trying to sound ghoulish but I do remember a few years back being able to and indeed obviously doing so going back on this message board to that day and rereading the developing horror and disbelief as it happened.
I wasn’t on the board that day at anytime (I don’t think) but the world changed that day and those of my age mid 50’s and above know what I mean….the feeling of everything we knew before was no more. |
I was working in a large computer firm at the time in a technical support call centre. Remember a customer calling for an issue and mentioning what was happening. Then all the phone lines went quiet and we were all watching sky news as event unfolded. It was horrifically surreal and no one new what else the terrorists had planned. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:24 - Sep 10 with 1131 views | DropCliffsNotBombs |
We had a message over the tannoy at County Upper from the head after the second tower was hit, but didn't understand fully or grasp the magnitude until got home. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:29 - Sep 10 with 1108 views | Dubtractor |
Almost certainly the single most shocking event of my lifetime.
The world changed for the worse that day, we're still feeling the after effects now. [Post edited 10 Sep 22:29]
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:38 - Sep 10 with 1026 views | J2BLUE |
Same here. Walked home from school with a mate. Went to the paper shop and bought some sweets. Then went back to his to play xbox and instead saw what had happened and sat there in stunned disbelief. Like you, I didn't fully understand the magnitude of what I was watching.
I was thinking the other day while watching a documentary that I still can't quite get my head around it. However much information on it that I absorb it still feels completely unreal. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:42 - Sep 10 with 1015 views | Furrow |
I was working as a Pub Manager on that fateful day, and I remember being behind the bar, watching the whole thing unfold on Sky News.
Not a thing anyone could watch and forget. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 23:00 - Sep 10 with 928 views | Joey_Joe_Joe_Junior |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:38 - Sep 10 by J2BLUE |
Same here. Walked home from school with a mate. Went to the paper shop and bought some sweets. Then went back to his to play xbox and instead saw what had happened and sat there in stunned disbelief. Like you, I didn't fully understand the magnitude of what I was watching.
I was thinking the other day while watching a documentary that I still can't quite get my head around it. However much information on it that I absorb it still feels completely unreal. |
I was thinking it must have only been 10.20am EST when my mum told me about it on the way home, shows the scale of it in terms of how fast news was moving a time very different to that from now. | |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 23:26 - Sep 10 with 831 views | stonojnr |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 20:55 - Sep 10 by Swansea_Blue |
There are only a few events that have been seared into my memory and that was one (the other main one was listening to our invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War on the radio while I was in my student digs wondering if it would escalate and we’d end up with conscription. And then the Falklands).
Just horrific scenes and I can still recall the shock of it playing out. We followed it in work somehow; it must have been on the radio as I doubt internet TV was a thing and it certainly wouldn’t have been at the place I was working at anyway as we didn’t have networked PCs. |
internet tv was very much around even back then, not that it worked that well over dialup modems, but watched quite abit of the 98 world cup/00 Euros via it as part of a trial, but you only got maybe 720x360 pixels at best really iirc, maybe even 640x360 or 320x240 for news clips, but it was enough to see the first clips come through for sure, and you realised the world had very much changed.
but the servers serving the internet tv data, as opposed to the actual internet bit in between connecting them, just couldnt handle the load, basically it was like a denial of service attack just on a scale no-one could have ever planned for, basically everyone in the country who was online were trying to download the same thing, and the service failed, and took a bunch of other servers with other services down with it. So there was alot of the internet which might well have been running but you just couldnt connect to it through gateways, or off your access point.server farms, which were just overloaded and flooded with traffic.
in the end it led to the BBC developing like a low byte basic news site front end that theyve deployed maybe a couple of times since I think, when major news stories happen like that, just to protect the service and still provide people with info, and I think it also altered alot of the architecture of how such tech is provided for resilience on the internet and how traffic is managed.
I know one of the changes at our work was a bunch of flat screen tvs were installed very soon afterwards around the buildings, and especially in ops centres, just so that in a future crisis event on that scale, people would be able to have the information they needed without reliance on the internet, for it. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 23:58 - Sep 10 with 771 views | Churchman |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 21:02 - Sep 10 by bsw72 |
Was on the trade floor, lines to Cantor went down and then the tvs cut over. Next few days were manic, mixture of watching news and 12-14 hours in office, home, shower, sleep and repeat, still remember rigging up a 56k modem to dial into the Nymex backup servers for our guys to close positions. Seems like a bad dream looking back on it. A couple of colleagues who worked in our us HQ have subsequently died of cancer related to what they breathed in that day. Truly awful. |
I read that aside from everything else about 400 tons of asbestos was blasted into the air when the towers went down.
I was working for an IT company in Cobham at the time. We had cutting edge kit so heard there was a problem very soon after the first aeroplane hit. There was actually a lot of laughter. ‘What kind of w@nker in a light aeroplane hits the WTC? Idiot!’ Etc etc.
Then the pictures started coming through and it all got worse and worse, as we know. We followed it throughout the day and decided that in the uncertainty, by mid afternoon it was time to get home. It was odd going into the car park. Heathrow = a lot of air traffic around Cobham way. Not that day. Silent. I got home to Kent and following it on tv, the news was hard to get one’s head around and didn’t improve..
It was not helped by knowing that my ski buddy was working in the Pentagon that week. Fortunately he was not 8n the building when it was hit, but it took an absolute age for his family to find out he was safe.
Extraordinary time and a truly terrible one. |  | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 06:14 - Sep 11 with 544 views | Sparky85 |
Had just started 6th form earlier that week. A few of us were pushing the boundaries of what we were allowed to do so had turned on a TV in our block to play computers.
First thing that flashed up was tower 1 not long after the first hit. Whilst a little shocking, we were following the headline that it was possibly an accident and then bang! Live we watched the 2nd plane hit. Stunned silence for what felt like hours.
Head of 6th form stormed in and started shouting at us for having the TV on, so we just pointed at the TV and what was happening. Felt I could literally see the blood drain from his face. Not long after the collapse, I remember the tannoy asking for a lad in the year above me to report to main reception. Turned out he lost 2 close relatives that day.
There are not many days at all that I remember as well as that, especially 25 years ago.
Partner and I did New York a few years back. Spent almost a whole day at ground zero. Another experience I’ll never forget | | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 06:25 - Sep 11 with 492 views | ITFC_Forever |
Had just started a new job at work and had been in Milton Keynes for the morning.
Stopped at the Staples there to buy a few bits and got back in the car to drive home.
Car radio came on and wasn’t paying much attention to it. The news said something about a plane crash in New York and then they started talking about the twin towers and thought they’d moved on to talk about the redevelopment of Wembley.
It was only when I started listening properly I realised what was going on… and within a couple of minutes the other planes started hitting - the second tower, the Pentagon and then the one the heroes on the plane took it down in the woodland. |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 06:37 - Sep 11 with 470 views | Steve_M |
Yes. a truly horrible day.
Essentially the information unfolded via the internet for me, didn't have TVs all round the office in those days, but via a combination of news sites and people posting on TWTD I followed in fascinated horror.
I read an interesting piece last week about the 17 minutes between the first plane hitting and the second, 17 minutes when people could just think it was a bad accident and not a coordinated attack. When people made choices that either kept them alive or led to their deaths. It recaptured some of that unfolding horror.
If anyone it's interested, it's here. I don't agree with the opening paragraph though:
https://www.nationalgeographic |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 06:52 - Sep 11 with 414 views | bsw72 |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 06:37 - Sep 11 by Steve_M |
Yes. a truly horrible day.
Essentially the information unfolded via the internet for me, didn't have TVs all round the office in those days, but via a combination of news sites and people posting on TWTD I followed in fascinated horror.
I read an interesting piece last week about the 17 minutes between the first plane hitting and the second, 17 minutes when people could just think it was a bad accident and not a coordinated attack. When people made choices that either kept them alive or led to their deaths. It recaptured some of that unfolding horror.
If anyone it's interested, it's here. I don't agree with the opening paragraph though:
https://www.nationalgeographic |
First paragraph rings true, we had the screens on the floor with live coverage which was live after a few mins (US always have their traffic news helicopters flying at start of day) and until the 2nd plane hit was all assumed to be an awful accident, then there was the second explosion and that is when people realised what was actually happening. | | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 07:13 - Sep 11 with 345 views | noggin |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:29 - Sep 10 by Dubtractor |
Almost certainly the single most shocking event of my lifetime.
The world changed for the worse that day, we're still feeling the after effects now. [Post edited 10 Sep 22:29]
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Sky News have just said that an estimated 4.7 million lives have been lost as a result of 9/11. |  |
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 07:35 - Sep 11 with 265 views | Churchman |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 06:37 - Sep 11 by Steve_M |
Yes. a truly horrible day.
Essentially the information unfolded via the internet for me, didn't have TVs all round the office in those days, but via a combination of news sites and people posting on TWTD I followed in fascinated horror.
I read an interesting piece last week about the 17 minutes between the first plane hitting and the second, 17 minutes when people could just think it was a bad accident and not a coordinated attack. When people made choices that either kept them alive or led to their deaths. It recaptured some of that unfolding horror.
If anyone it's interested, it's here. I don't agree with the opening paragraph though:
https://www.nationalgeographic |
This article is well worth reading.
For some people, they had no chance. For others like some of the firefighters, their duty meant they too had no chance.
For many others, they had a choice. However, a choice based on what? Experience? Information that didn’t exist? Intuition? And that’s the key. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
It is natural to ask the question - would you have turned the computers off and straightened the pictures or got out immediately? Listened for announcements or made your own decision? | | | |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 08:17 - Sep 11 with 179 views | MVBlue |
| 25 years ago tomorrow on 22:29 - Sep 10 by Dubtractor |
Almost certainly the single most shocking event of my lifetime.
The world changed for the worse that day, we're still feeling the after effects now. [Post edited 10 Sep 22:29]
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I was working in my IT software engineer role and had MSN messenger chat with a bar manager friend who was home and told me. I got up the bbc news site while working and we live chatted about the unfolding event. Many in my office were matter of fact and kept working, they were an odd lot. When home in my shared house I had cable TV NTL and could watch multiple News outlets, and a habit to this day for big events sat and watched the analysis for hours. Was always really mystified by the Pentagon hit, and the lack of footage of it just always seemed odd.
The next day the newsagents papers front pages were really something, they had photography and coverage and headlines such as 'terror!' and 'evil!'. Still have the 9/12 Express from the next day.
The world started to change and freedoms of just going to institution buildings were starting to shutdown, airport security checks became much longer. The stock market got very rocky then Bush told everyone that it will not stop us to support economies by spending. I work at a US company and my old manager told me it caused him to enlist. Many Americans did so. They started an aggressive footing that day. [Post edited 11 Sep 8:18]
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| 25 years ago tomorrow on 08:58 - Sep 11 with 92 views | Bluespeed225 |
Was anyone here in the ITFC ticket office? I was in there with about 30 others, sorting out Visas for Moscow. A lot of us were kneeling on the floor filling out forms because of the lack of counter top space. I think the second tower had gone, I saw the first go down on the tv’s in Hughes old Buttermarket shopping Center store, walked over to the ticket office, a bit numb, and word filtered through. Once home the enormity of it all became clear. Inconsequential in the grand scheme of things know, but I take some comfort from being with those people in that place as it happened. NY had been good to me, before then, and a couple months later I took redundancy and blew the lot on living there for 6 months. First place I visited was Ground Zero. But the feeling in NY was so positive that following spring/summer. Out of the darkness… | | | |
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