The day America will never forget: remembering 9/11, 20 years later

Saturday marks 20 years since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington

Today's expression: Wrest control
Explore more: Lesson #397
September 9, 2021:

September 11, 2001 is a day Americans will never forget. Americans that were alive at the time have moments that stuck with them, like where they were when it happened or bits and pieces from the 24/7 media coverage that followed. This lesson looks back on the tragedy and heroism of 9/11 and commemorates the day that changed America. Plus, learn “wrest control.”

Be your best self in English

Move confidently through the English-speaking world

Listen

  • Learning speed
  • Full speed

Learn

TranscriptActivitiesDig deeperYour turn
No translationsEspañol中文FrançaisPortuguês日本語ItalianoDeutschTürkçePolski

This Saturday marks twenty years since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington

Lesson summary

Coming up today… September 11, 2001, is the most documented day in American history. The terrorist attacks on the east coast of the United States unfolded on live television in the era of 24-7 mass media. A years-long investigative commission uncovered many of the details of what happened on that fateful day. But, twenty years later, it’s still a shock to read the full timeline of what happened that day, even for someone like me who lived through it. So, in this lesson, I’ll take you minute by minute through what happened on 9-11.

Before we get started, I’ll give you a little bit of terminology. The World Trade Center was a complex of seven office buildings in southern Manhattan, in New York City. The buildings were constructed between 1966 and 1975; the two largest were called the Twin Towers; they both rose 110 stories and about 415 meters into the sky. At the time they were completed, they were the tallest buildings in the world. They were instantly recognizable among the New York City skyline.

The Pentagon is an office complex outside Washington, D.C. It’s the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Timeline of September 11

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was Election Day in New York City; at 6:00 a.m., polls opened for the city voters to choose their new mayor. Rudy Giuliani was to leave office after serving two terms at the helm of America’s largest city. The weather was clear; the skies were blue, and the temperature was just under 60 degrees Fahrenheit or about 15 degrees Celsius.

At 7:59 and 8:15 a.m. two flights took off from Boston, both heading for Los Angeles. They were hijacked just after they took off. At 8:19, the flight crew on American Airlines Flight 11 alerted Air Traffic Control that a hijacking was underway. The military was alerted, and jets were scrambled to follow the airplane.

At 8:46 a.m., at the start of the workday, Flight 11, with its 76 passengers, 11 crew, and controlled, then, by five hijackers, crashed into Floors 93 through 99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was loaded with enough jet fuel to last the trip across the country to the west coast. Hundreds of people were killed instantly in the explosion, including everyone on the plane. The tower burned, emitting a plume of gray and black smoke from the top of one of New York City’s most recognizable buildings.

President George W. Bush was notified four minutes later. His advisors, and much of the world watching, thought it was a terrible accident. At 8:59, the police ordered an evacuation of both of the Twin Towers.

Soon after the first crash, live television coverage from news helicopters began to show the fire burning high above the streets of lower Manhattan. That’s when the second LA-bound plane from Boston approached New York. At 9:03 a.m., the world watched on television as the second plane flew low over the city, took a deliberate turn, hit the South Tower between floors 77 and 85, and exploded in a ball of orange fire and black smoke. Debris rained down on the streets below as panicked pedestrians ran for cover. First responders—firefighters, police, emergency medical technicians, doctors, and others—descended on lower Manhattan to help.

There was more. At 9:37 a.m., a plane crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, causing part of the building to collapse. Domestic flights were instructed to land immediately. Over 500 international flights were either turned back or diverted to Canada or Mexico.

Meanwhile, in New York, the fires high above the city continued to burn. Firefighters and first responders attempted to evacuate the entire World Trade Center complex and fight the fires. They went up into the Twin Towers to help people stuck in elevators and stairwells. They were making sure the floors were evacuated. But building engineers watching the scene on TV feared for the structural integrity of the buildings. They knew the buildings couldn’t stand forever with intense fires burning on the top floors. They feared a collapse.

And then it happened. At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower fell in on itself from top to bottom after burning for just 56 minutes. A 110-story building was flattened; only a portion of the exterior structure remained standing. The collapse took ten seconds and happened on live television.

The attacks from the air were not over. Just minutes later, at 10:03 a.m., another hijacked plane crashed in the rural town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. That flight, United 93, was the only one to miss its intended target. Passengers and crew on that flight were aware that previous planes had been hijacked and used to attack the World Trade Center. They wrested control of the flight from the hijackers and purposely crashed the plane into an empty field to avoid any additional casualties. The organizers of the attacks later stated Flight 93’s intended target was the U.S. Capitol building. The Flight 93 crash was the last of four hijackings that day, though, at the time, there was no way of knowing it was over.

Back in New York, at 10:28 a.m., the North Tower, the first to be hit, collapsed after burning for 102 minutes. The World Trade Center site, a collection of office buildings near the southern tip of Manhattan, was reduced to burning rubble. Fires had spread to other nearby buildings; at 5:28 p.m. that night, another 47-story building would collapse. The smoke from Ground Zero could be seen in satellite photos from space; it would hang over New York City for weeks.

Manhattan was evacuated below 14th Street. All bridges and tunnels into the city were closed; office workers from the suburbs desperately tried to escape the city. Mass transit was shut down . Thousands of people were injured from falling debris and had nowhere to go; they simply walked the streets until they could get help. They were called the “walking wounded.”

The president was in Florida that morning; he was shuttled in secret to Air Force bases in the country’s interior, flying from place to place to avoid detection. The vice president was in Washington; he went to a secure underground command center. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, third in the line of succession, was taken to an underground bunker in the mountains west of Washington, D.C.

All flights were grounded; the U.S. government said they would shoot down any aircraft over American skies, and they meant it. When the president returned to the White House that evening, the vice president was evacuated to an undisclosed location so that the two would not be in the same city at the same time. The president addressed the nation from the Oval Office at 8:30 p.m., calling the attacks that day “the very worst of human nature.”

The final death count would not be known for a while, but 2,977 victims died either on the planes or on the ground. Over 3,000 children were left without parents.

The view from home

Everyone that was alive at the time has their story. I was in New Jersey, just about 25 miles from Ground Zero, watching on TV. I was 20 years old, staying at home, and preparing to go to London later that month for a semester abroad. Two days earlier, on Sunday, I had gone on a bike tour of New York City that took us right through the World Trade Center area.

I watched it on TV at home. I tuned in when most people did, which was after the first tower was on fire. I saw the second plane hit the second tower. When the first tower collapsed, it wasn’t clear, at first, what had happened. The smoke was obscuring everything. On the station I was watching, the people talking were on the ground, so they didn’t know what happened. It was only clear later from the helicopter images that one tower was gone.

The moment that sticks with me, the most vivid image, was when the second tower collapsed because the channel I was watching had a clear view of that tower and the collapse. And that was the biggest shock to me, the moment that defines the day. I remember where I was in the house; I remember the exact television set I was watching, I remember the channel—CNBC—and the news anchor who was narrating it, Mark Haines. I was standing next to my bed, in a bedroom in my parents’ house, unable to do anything but watch.

For years, I didn’t go to Ground Zero. After several months, people would go down and look at the site. I wouldn’t; I would not gawk as a tourist at the unfinished hole in the ground where the towers had stood. But eventually, they built a memorial to the towers and a museum underground called the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which is an excellent museum. And next Monday, I’ll tell you about that museum.

Great stories make learning English fun

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

QuizListeningPronunciationVocabularyGrammar

Free Member Content

Join free to unlock this feature

Get more from Plain English with a free membership


Starter feature

Test your listening skills

Make sure you’re hearing every word. Listen to an audio clip, write what you hear, and get immediate feedback


Starter feature

Upgrade your pronunciation

Record your voice, listen to yourself, and compare your pronunciation to a native speaker’s

Starter feature

Sharpen your listening

Drag the words into the correct spot in this interactive exercise based on the Plain English story you just heard


Starter feature

Improve your grammar

Practice choosing the right verb tense and preposition based on real-life situations



Free Member Content

Join free to unlock this feature

Get more from Plain English with a free membership

Plus+ feature

Practice sharing your opinion

Get involved in this story by sharing your opinion and discussing the topic with others

Expression: Wrest control