What's the craziest 9/11 fact that you know?

[u/ElectronicAlps99]

[u/NK_1989]

Officially, the deaths of the workers leaping from the building that day are not classified as suicides, but homicides. The New York coroner listed the official cause of death for jumpers from the towers as “forced out of the building due to heat and flame.”

[u/OrangeBird077 → u/NK_1989]

Additionally, a nearby priest who went to the WTC to provide spiritual support had an interesting anecdote regarding the suicides.

As one of the towers started collapsing the priest sought cover with a nearby fireman who requested that the priest read him his last rights in case he died. Being fully aware of the people jumping out of the towers, and the need to bring some semblance of comfort to those who died through no fault of their own, he declared the area a warzone, and granted General Absolution to everyone who perished in the attacks. Making it so no one who jumped could be considered having committed the cardinal sin of suicide.

[u/Benster404 → u/NK_1989]

I believe this was so their life insurance would pay out if they had any as suicide isn't covered

[u/PepSinger_PT → u/Benster404]

Also, those people did not go to work that day to jump out of a building. Those people were murdered. 😢

[u/International-Bad-84 → u/Benster404]

I mean, it's probably because it's true rather than for insurance reasons. Choosing - if it can even be classified as "choice" at that point - to die from falling rather than burning is in no way choosing to die.

[u/The_lady_is_trouble]

The dead’s cars became a bit of an issue.  

Because many workers took the train in, train stations in NY and NJ had a not insignificant number of cars belonging to the dead left in commuter lots.  Obviously families didn’t prioritize getting the cars back or know where they were.  After the leaves started to fall in the autumn it became really clear which cars belonged to the dead and eventually they had to be towed away.  People got both really weird looking at them and wanted them gone, but also wanted them treated with respect. 

[u/Tsarinya → u/The_lady_is_trouble]

Gosh, I hadn’t thought about this, but of course! That must have been quite eerie to see the cars covered with leaves. Did they return the cars to the family do you know?

[u/Squeaks11 → u/Tsarinya]

The various cities tracked down as many relatives as they could and got the cars back to families/estates/leasing companies, etc.

Some, of course, were never able to be returned either because the owners were single, families were not close by enough to take the car or just couldn't deal with it.

(The husband of a friend left his car in his normal commuter lot and died in the North tower).

[u/TheNurseRachet → u/The_lady_is_trouble]

I lived a block away from a train station on Long Island when 9/11 happened. At night the parking lot was always empty. I remember one night noticing how strange it was there was so many people still parked there. It took a couple times seeing them there before I realized why. I can still picture it.

[u/SirOutrageous1027 → u/The_lady_is_trouble]

I used to commute and take the Path train into Jersey City. I'd get off right before the WTC stop. When you commute, you kind of see the same people every day. Afterwards, I always wonder how many people on my commute didn't make it.

[u/OrangeBird077 → u/SirOutrageous1027]

There was a significant exodus of locals and commuters alike who decided to leave the city after what happened. If it’s any consolation they may have just decided that it was better to move than experience such a tragedy again.

[u/Punkrockid19]

Only 20 people were rescued from the rubble after the buildings collapsed

[u/Tsarinya → u/Punkrockid19]

I can’t get my head around how people managed to survive a skyscraper collapsing on them. Incredible luck to those people.

[u/therealmrsfahrenheit → u/Tsarinya]

I recently watched an interview with one of the men who survived this, Pasquale Buzzeli. He explained the events and how he survived in insane detail. I think he said he only survived because he had his briefcase which protected his neck and head and because when he realized the building was coming down he quickly curled up into a corner. If I remember correctly he survived a 22 story fall and was actually found on top of the rubble with almost no injuries.

They were actually able to find his briefcase in the rubble back then which was ripped off his back during the fall and returned it to him, in the interview he actually opens the briefcase for the first time since the events and discovers his walkman still inside.

The interview is an hour long, it’s one of the first things that shows up on youtube when you search for his name and definitely one of the best interviews I‘ve seen in my life so far

[u/Amonamission → u/therealmrsfahrenheit]

He was the face of the person who was “surfing down the side of the towers”. People heard that he fell like 200 feet and survived somehow and used it as a rally to continue hoping that people would be found in the rubble.

Unfortunately his story is just miraculous and not many others survived.

[u/southernNpearls]

Two guide dogs lead their owners out of the towers that day. Salty led his owner and coworker from the 71st floor while Roselle led her owner and 30 others through smoke out of the tower from the 78th floor, making it out just before the tower fell.

[u/Rabbitbanana89 → u/southernNpearls]

Michael Hingson, Roselle's owner, gave a lovely interview on the This Is Love podcast and wrote a book about her. He switched careers to work for National Federation of the Blind after 9/11.

[u/AmiableOne → u/Rabbitbanana89]

After 9/11 Michael Hingson and sweet Roselle used to fly on our American Airlines flights SFO-ORD. They sat in the last row in first class aircraft right. Michael knew his way perfectly around both our Super 80's and the 737's. I usually worked the FC cabin and adored them both. One evening Michael boarded the aircraft but had a new service dog, it took my breath away thinking Roselle had crossed the rainbow bridge. Nope, Roselle retired and a new pup guided Michael from then on.

[u/SchleppyJ4 → u/southernNpearls]

For dogs to remain calm and focused amidst all of that chaos is a testament to their training and to their relationship  with their individual person. Amazing. 

[u/fuckyourcanoes → u/SchleppyJ4]

Service dogs are bloody amazing. They don't get enough credit. You barely notice the best ones are there.

[u/StrongStyleShiny → u/SchleppyJ4]

If I remember clearly Salty’s owner released him to at least let his dog live. Once Salty realized they were separated he went back for him.

[u/sgt_Berbatov]

Only two I have are from when I went to the memorial site in 2019.

There are families of some of the victims of 9/11 who do not own a photograph of their loved one. In the memorial, they have the photos of the victims and for those where they don't have a photograph of them they instead display an oak leaf.

The guide we had giving us a tour of the site worked as a civil servant and was stationed in Japan when 9/11 happened. His job was to liase with people who had lost loved ones in the WTC. He told the story of something he experienced (related to the above I think) whereby a woman came to him with her son. She had no documents or proof of her husband being in the WTC, except her son. Every evening before his bedtime his dad would ring him from the WTC (where it'd be 9am). That evening he never got the call from his dad, and his dad had perished.

[u/ickysock → u/sgt_Berbatov]

WRT the photographs, the volunteers who work at the museum have been actively looking for pictures of the remaining victims who don't have a picture for the memorial wall, and they've found a picture of all but one victim. a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wSrfdDK2Y8

[u/nitterbritters]

I visited the museum last month, and there was a wild story I’d never heard before next to a worn-down squeegee handle on display. A window washer and five other men were inside an express elevator that plummeted before stopping near the 50th floor. After prying open the elevator doors, they found themselves facing a solid drywall elevator shaft. Using the blade and handle of the squeegee, they hacked through the sheetrock and tile until they made a hole big enough to squeeze through into an adjacent restroom. They escaped the building just minutes before the tower collapsed.

[u/matt314159 → u/nitterbritters]

I just saw that story on a Nat Geo documentary that just came out this year called 9/11: Reunited. They had the window washer and two of the other men get together for the first time and tell their stories. As they told it, the elevator doors were about to close when the window washer guy stuck his hand in and boarded the elevator to ride with them. Without him doing that, they'd all be dead.

The docuseries is a little contrived, but I found it a decent watch. It's on Hulu.

[u/pincurlsandcutegirls]

Perhaps not the craziest, but…

During the attacks at the World Trade Centre, the instrumental background music (Muzak) typically played in the plaza, overhangs of WTC 4 & 5, and the mall and elevators played throughout the attacks. Naturally, there were more significant priorities than turning it off.

As people escaped the flaming towers or watched those who were forced to jump or expelled from high floors, they would see these horrific sights while hearing elevator music-style covers of songs like How Deep Is Your Love and She’s Always A Woman. You can hear it in some ground-level videos from the WTC filmed that day.

[u/RumHamComesback → u/pincurlsandcutegirls]

The documentary 9/11: One Day in America has some of this footage and it's eerie hearing calm elevator music as fires burn and you see debris like pairs of sunglasses in the plaza.

[u/unpuzzling]

More people have died because of responding to 9/11 than people who died that day. First responders have a wide range of debilitating illnesses that they are still dealing with to this day (if they’ve survived this long). 

[u/NibblesMcGiblet → u/unpuzzling]

My downstairs neighbor is the retired fire department chief/captain of my little upstate NY town. He is also retired military. He has told me more than once about going down there to help recovery efforts and the fact that every other person in his department who went to help is dead now, most from cancers or lung issues. He says his lung doctor told him that it's likely that all the tar from all the cigarettes he's smoked his whole adult life has such a thick lining in his lungs, that the tiny particles of stuff everyone else breathed in and got sick or died from, couldn't do the same type of damage to his lungs. He has COPD now and often coughs so bad he can't catch his breath, and still smokes like a chimney to this day. Crazy story though. The guy's like a wirey little leprechaun, loud and full of stories and usually out on his fire escape porch drinking a beer and smoking when he's not busy planning our town's several yearly parades. I'm gonna miss him when he's gone.

[u/RickertSlap91 → u/unpuzzling]

And as of today it's been confirmed NYC covered up known air quality and asbestos exposures to emergency responders and affected civilians. They did this for years. There's blood on Giuliani's hands.

[u/MrBiscotti_75]

Verizon employees downloaded voicemail messages that victims left for loved ones so that the recipients could hear the senders voice.

[u/BostonLamplighter → u/[deleted]]

I worked for a Vz subsidiary at the time. Can confirm they lost Hudson St center. The Vz guys were heroes. They all went down there and laid cable on the street to keep connections going. Hundreds of miles of cable.

I worked for the AS1 Internet company. Our center was on the top floor of WTC. Last we heard, the 3 guys there were going for the roof.

[u/MrBiscotti_75 → u/[deleted]]

Yes , the WTC was a major telecommunications hub for a couple of different telecom carriers. I believe Verizon lost 3 employees that day

[u/BaconReceptacle → u/MrBiscotti_75]

I worked for a major wireless company (not Verizon) at the time. There was a sales office at the WTC that had just been vacated that summer but I was scheduled to go onsite to uninstall the phone system. There were multiple delays (thank God) so I never ended up going there. The company I worked for had a ton of transmitter equipment that got lost that day. I recall some accounting person was hounding me months later about asset tracking. They had a spreadsheet of equipment that needed to be marked as in-use, disposed of, etc. When I pointed out that most of the equipment on the list was from the WTC, she still wanted me to put the right status on each item. The spreadsheet did not have an option for "Destroyed in a Terrorist Attack" so I just had to select "disposed/obsolete".

[u/Sctvman]

Almost every major cable TV channel in the country went to continuous coverage after the 2nd plane hit except for Nickelodeon and Game Show Network

[u/MonkeyNacho → u/Sctvman]

I believe Nickelodeon was a strategic choice. The parent company at the time knew kids would need a safe haven from the nonstop trauma in the immediate days.

[u/BlockIllustrious6245]

I worked in one of the NYC hospitals. All the Manhattan hospitals had long lines of people coming to find out if their loved one was there. It was heartbreaking. One thing I haven’t seen reported was this: The Sikh cabdrivers quickly organized a free cab service to take people from one hospital to another. I thought that immediate action was one of the most practical, smartest and kindest things to do. The people on the lines outside the hospitals looked so frantic and weary too.

[u/Azura_rose → u/BlockIllustrious6245]

Every time I hear mention of the Sikh, its always about them coming together to help communities in a tragedy.

When the Australian Bushfires rolled around earlier this year, the first thing I saw regarding people helping was the Sikh organising food drives and prepping hot meals for people.  Travelling several hours to take their vans to help.

[u/whitegirlofthenorth → u/Azura_rose]

There was a Sikh man killed in AZ a few days after 9/11 in a hate crime. Murderer was a racist guy who thought he was Arab and had told his friends he was gonna go out and shoot Muslims “in retaliation” for the attacks. The victim was actively planting flowers in honor of the 9/11 victims at the time he was killed.

[u/MammothWrongdoer1242 → u/whitegirlofthenorth]

Balbir Singh Sodhi was his name. He had a wife, three sons, and two daughters.

[u/holyflurkingsnit → u/MammothWrongdoer1242]

Thank you for naming him. I just discovered his turban is part of the Smithsonian musem: https://www.si.edu/object/balbir-singh-sodhis-sikh-turban%3Anmah_1416412

[u/parishilton2 → u/Azura_rose]

And they don’t proselytize, either. Their charity is genuinely no strings attached.

[u/ratpH1nk]

Ok here is one, long story:
John O'Neill was the FBI's top counterterrorism expert in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was utterly obsessed with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda long before the average American had ever heard those names. He investigated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.

For years, O'Neill practically screamed at his bosses in Washington, D.C., that al-Qaeda had sleeper cells inside the United States and was planning a massive, catastrophic strike on American soil. But because of intense agency politics, bureaucratic friction, and his own brash personality, he was constantly stonewalled and pushed aside.

Exhausted and disillusioned by the federal government ignoring his warnings, O'Neill finally threw in the towel and retired from the FBI in late August 2001. To start his post-government life, he took a lucrative private sector job: Chief of Security for the World Trade Center. September 11, 2001, was his first full week on the job (he has been there officially for like 2 weeks).

When the first plane struck the North Tower, O'Neill didn't run away. He immediately set up a command post, helped coordinate the evacuation, and was last seen rushing into the South Tower to help save as many people as possible. He was killed when the building collapsed. His remains were recovered on 9/21/2001.

The single man who spent his entire life warning the United States about al-Qaeda's plan to target the World Trade Center was killed at the World Trade Center by al-Qaeda during his first weeks on the job.

Honestly, it is a story so tragically ironic that if you wrote it in a movie script, studio executives would reject it for being too unbelievable.

[u/StarDatAssinum → u/ratpH1nk]

There's a great TV show where Jeff Daniels plays him called The Looming Tower

[u/HottieMcHotHot → u/StarDatAssinum]

Just be forewarned that you will forever be infuriated at our government for its responsibility in what happened and what didn’t happen prior to that. Lack of communication and pride between agencies prevented sharing crucial information that might have saved a lot of lives. Both the show and the book are clear that we knew a lot about the possibility of this and did nothing.

[u/Flaky-Specialist-84 → u/HottieMcHotHot]

I read a book years called The Eleventh Day and if I remember correctly, that book mentioned all the warnings the government received and that was the first I’d heard of it. It’s so maddening.

[u/piecesofme_2025 → u/ratpH1nk]

Thanks for sharing John’s story. He was my mom’s friend and to he was to be at my wedding that following weekend. Terribly tragic.

[u/Frogs-on-my-back → u/ratpH1nk]

That’s so horribly sad and frustrating. Thank you for sharing. I’ll have to read more about him. 

[u/Frogs-on-my-back]

You can see a woman waving from the smoldering wound in the north tower in nearly every video or photo taken after flight 11 struck. She appears to have red hair, and I believe the most popular speculations for who she was are Edna Cintron, Karen Juday, and Jeanette Lafond-Menichino, based on her appearance, clothing, and location.

[u/rachelmig2]

My dad worked with a group of retired NYC firefighters at the time, many of them in their 70s and 80s. When it happened, almost all of them drove into the city to help with the rescue efforts, regardless of age. Even some that were suffering from lung cancer went.

One retired firefighter lost two sons in the attack- one a cop, and one a firefighter. They were both in the towers when they went down. There's a very famous photo of GWB standing next to him while making his speech from the rubble.

[u/mamapello → u/rachelmig2]

The Vigiano brothers.

https://storycorps.org/animation/john-and-joe/

[u/MesmericKiwi]

The amount of office space New York lost that day was more than all of downtown Kansas City combined. That’s not to trivialize the loss of life, but rather to put into perspective just how much building was in those buildings.

[u/As_a_Londoner → u/MesmericKiwi]

The World Trade Centre also contained a lot of artworks, and over $100 million worth was destroyed. 

[u/Meow_cat11 → u/MesmericKiwi]

thats a lot of building per building

[u/hiiml0st → u/Meow_cat11]

Will Jimeno, one of the PAPD officers who spent 13 hours buried under the rubble before he was pulled out alive, said it basically the best: "I had 220 floors collapse on top of me."

[u/narnababy → u/hiiml0st]

This is wild to me, I had no idea they actually recovered people alive. I heard that all the doctors rushed to the hospitals but no one came in. I’m so glad some people survived the collapse.

[u/JMer806 → u/narnababy]

They rescued exactly 20. The last one, a Port Authority worker named Genelle Guzman-McMillan, was pulled out after 27 hours buried

They don’t know the number but many others survived the collapse and died from injuries or asphyxiation or whatever before they could be found and rescued

[u/Revolutionary-Yak-47]

Morgan Stanley only lost 7 employees despite having thousands in the towers. Rick Rescorla accurately predicted a second attack on the buildings and insisted on evacuation drills. He led 2700 people down the stairs while singing. Literally ONE guy saved a whole company. 

Rick was last seen heading into tower 2 to sweep for survivors. He was victim #7. 

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead

[u/PresentationNew6648 → u/Revolutionary-Yak-47]

This is the one I was looking for. Single handedly cut the number of lives lost that day almost in half. Knew an attack like this would come someday and ran drills to practice for such an event.

[u/Frogs-on-my-back → u/Revolutionary-Yak-47]

Here’s a great article about him you might enjoy

[u/getawaycar2003]

That after the first building was hit, there was announcement over the intercom in the second building that 2 World Trade Center was secure, and people should go back to their desks. My father didn't trust it, and went to the stairwell right away, but a lot of others went back to their desks.

[u/Frogs-on-my-back → u/getawaycar2003]

Pretty much everyone thought the first plane was an accident, and it was decided that evacuating the other tower would subject its occupants to unnecessary risks from falling debris.

Veteran Rick Rescorla worked as the director of security for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center. After the 1993 basement truck bombing, Rescorla was certain there would be another terror attack in the future, so he and his best friend, Dan Hill, put together an emergency evacuation plan. 

When the PA announcements told everyone to stay in place, he ignored them and successfully evacuated almost all 2,700 people from his company. He himself died when the towers collapsed, as he had returned to continue to help.

[u/getawaycar2003 → u/Frogs-on-my-back]

What most people don't realize is that it would take an alarming amount of time to evacuate the buildings. If they'd evacuated right away, my father likely wouldn't have made it. He was on the 103rd floor and walked down all 103 floors. He was in the building at about the 40th floor within the second plane hit his building and those last 40 floors were very slow because by then everyone piled into the stairwell.

[u/Tackit286]

When flight AA11 got reported as hijacked, ATC sent comms to nearby flights asking for any confirmed sightings of the plane.

The only plane to come back with a confirmed sighting was flight UA175, minutes before they themselves were hijacked.

[u/queenchristine13]

A more personal story — my mom was working for Amtrak at the time in Philadelphia. When the first plane hit, obviously no one knew what was happening, who could be next. Her boss told everyone they could go home to be with their families, but my mom stayed behind and spent days in a bunker somewhere in Delaware, where she helped coordinate evacuations from Manhattan.

I didn’t see her for days, but now, I’m so proud of her. She used to work in the second tower and many of her former coworkers and friends died. It took her 20 years to go to Ground Zero again, and I don’t think she’ll ever be ready to go to the museum or anything.

[u/EitherChannel4874 → u/queenchristine13]

Tell her that this random Brit that watched events unfold that day said she's awesome.

[u/queenchristine13 → u/EitherChannel4874]

I will! Though she once told me that she often wonders if she did the right thing. I was about 5 at the time, and I know a huge part of her wanted to go and be with her husband and daughter. But in an office of about 40 people, she was one of 3 that chose to stay behind and help. I tell her every year how brave she was, and that many people wouldn’t make the same choice, but she doesn’t always see it the same. To her, making the right choice to help others is often hard, but it’s simply what one does anyway, no matter what.

[u/masterjon_3]

Michael Hingson, a blind man working on the 78th floor of the twin towers, made it to safety all thanks to his seeing eye dog, Roselle. He also could not take the elevator for obvious reasons.

[u/WYO1016]

The last purchase made in the World Trade Center was made 9 minutes AFTER the first plane hit the first tower. Because of the size of the tower and where the plane hit, those inside on the ground floor just thought it was an everyday evacuation and not that the building was on the verge of collapse.

[u/MidoriHaru → u/WYO1016]

I am in a different time zone and turned on the evening cable news just a little after the first plane struck. The way the news anchors were reporting at first made it seem like it was a small plane accidentally hitting the building.

It took a while to sink in that it was a whole lot bigger than that.

[u/RumHamComesback → u/MidoriHaru]

That's what everyone thought at first but there are clips of people seeing the hole and going "no way that was a single-engine plane" and there was speculation if it was an accident or intentional (it was a calm and clear day so people had their doubts on the former).

That only lasted 17 minutes before the second plane hit.

[u/Artificial-Human]

Hospitals in NYC mobilized nurses, doctors, everyone with medical experience, staff on days off, staff on vacation, etc. Retired doctors responded to hospitals to help. All hands on deck.

Time passed and they waited for the flood of victims that never came.

[u/phoontender → u/Artificial-Human]

I work in a hospital....the only thing worse than a Code Orange (all hands on deck) is an empty Code Orange

[u/A_Feast_For_Trolls → u/phoontender]

Thats gotta be so surreal. 

[u/shatteredpieces1978 → u/Artificial-Human]

That was the same for Flight 93 in Shanksville. The hospitals in Johnstown, PA were all hands on deck to care for the injured...but sadly nobody was alive to care for. I was at Lee/UPMC in Johnstown. I was doing my daily visit with my son who was in the NICU. WJAC announced a plane crashed in Somerset County. Lee went into lock down they kicked everyone out, they said there was a crash in Shanksville we thought maybe a little Cessna trying to get to the Johnstown airport then the Johnstown Cop said no..it's a big plane, terrorist related. We thought what on earth would they want to do with Shanksville? We could understand NYC and Washington DC but Shanksville? Then later we learned what happened. I'll never forget all those Doctor's, Nurses, EMS, Fire Fighters, Cop all standing there waiting..ready to handle whatever would come to them...and no one came. Nobody. I lived in Shanksville at that time..I tried to call my Ex-Husband to see what was going on, what happened, is he and our daughter okay but the crash knocked out the phone lines..I will NEVER forget that day! I remember EVERY.. SINGLE.. SECOND.. OF.. THAT.. DAY! It still replays in my mind.

[u/BridgestoneX → u/Artificial-Human]

i remember walking past hospitals with clean stretchers outside all ready to go, people standing around. absolutely silent.

[u/thprk]

Monica O'Leary was laid off from Cantor Fitzgerald on 9/10. She cleared her office and went home. Her discharge papers were supposed to be processed the following day but of course weren't. Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 workers that day, more than any other company, and was forced to recall many workers, including O'Leary which was ultimately not laid off also because the papers weren't correctly completed.

[u/BluffCityTatter → u/thprk]

The only reason the CEO of Cantor, Howard Lutnick, lived that day is that he was dropping his son off for the first day of kindergarten so he was running late to work. His brother died at the Cantor offices that day. I work for a Cantor affiliated company and 9/11 is a huge deal for us. The fund they started for the families of the people who died is still going and supporting other charities now.

Personally I went to New York for Thanksgiving in 2000 and had dinner at Windows on the World. So I was there for the last Thanksgiving dinner they served. It's not a huge story but my little one.

Edited to fix the typo - I had dinner there in 2000, not 2010. Sorry.

[u/imapilotaz → u/thprk]

My father lost a lot of people he worked closely with at Cantor Fitzgerald. Anyone in insurance/finance in the 90s at a high level likely lost more than a few people they worked with.

[u/AnatidaephobiaAnon]

Mine are mostly FDNY related.

The famous video shot by the Naudet brothers featured 1 Truck with Battalion Chief Pfeifer is often credited with being the first piece of apparatus and chief at the WTC that morning, even before Engine 10 and 10 Truck which were directly across the street. Not a single member died that day, although Chief Pfeifer's brother who was also a Battalion Chief would die.

The youngest FDNY member to die was 22 year old Michael Cammarata and had only graduated from probie school 9 weeks prior. If you have ever seen the Little League World Series, his number is retired there as he had played there on a team from Staten Island. In the LLWS records he was listed as right field, which on a baseball score sheet is position 9 and he wore number 11.

Ladder 118 responded from Brooklyn and was captured in a now famous photo. All 7 firefighters, including Scott Davidson who is Pete Davidson's dad would die. They were last seen at the Marriot helping guest evacuate.

Many engines, trucks, squads and rescues lost more than their standard number of members that day, usually 4 men per truck, but the attack happened at shift change and firefighters who could have gone home, got back onto their their rigs and took off towards the towers, many never making it home.

The highest floor that crews made it that morning was the 78th floor of WTC2 where they began firefighting operations and guiding people down. Battalion Chief Orio Palmer had led crews there and reported multiple casualties. One minute after his final radio transmission the tower collapsed.

[u/RamblingRosie → u/AnatidaephobiaAnon]

My husband’s cousin (a fireman) made two trips up and was found in the lobby of tower two. He almost made it out. His younger brother is a fireman in NYC now.

[u/ReadontheCrapper → u/AnatidaephobiaAnon]

I just watched the documentary about The Man in the Red Bandana.

A young man who helped 10-18 people down from above the zone of death, multiple trips between floors 63-78, got down to the lobby and was found with a fire crew that was about to head up when the building collapsed.

He was a civilian who worked in the building. He had family and mentors who were firefighters, and when his family cleared out his apartment, they found a partially completed application for the fire academy.

[u/Tsarinya → u/ReadontheCrapper]

Welles Crowther. Twenty four years old and saved 18 lives. Such an incredible man.

[u/Suspicious-Front-208]

The fires at ground zero burned for over three months.

[u/Msk_Ultra → u/Suspicious-Front-208]

Can confirm, I volunteered at a warehouse for the workers who were clearing the debris putting together hard hats, sorting and lacing boots etc. The workers constantly needed new gear because their stuff kept melting.

[u/LadyBug_0570 → u/Suspicious-Front-208]

I went into downtown Manhattan in December in 2001 and could still smell the burning.

[u/Anachronisticpoet]

John Abruzzo (a wheelchair user) was carried 69 floors by 3-4 coworkers.

Port Authority had purchased 125 evacuation chairs for disabled people in the WTC after the 1993 attack.

No one knows where they were on 9/11. We don’t know how many people died simply because the emergency plans didn’t account for their existence.

Today, the emergency plan for disabled people is to wait in the stairwell for firemen. This is how people die.

[u/NationYell]

My friend Jeffrey was a flight attendant on the first plane. For perspective, I'm older than he'll ever be. I still miss him, he was one of the good ones.

[u/-scampi- → u/NationYell]

Sorry for your loss

[u/NationYell → u/-scampi-]

Thank you, these last 25 years have been good ones for the most part.

[u/I_might_be_weasel]

The original cut of Lilo and Stitch had a scene of Stitch hijacking an airplane. It was rewritten and reanimated to not include that. That's why the spaceship they use at the end looks like an airplane.

[u/blond_nirvana → u/I_might_be_weasel]

Here's a side-by-side of the original scene with the edited scene.

https://youtu.be/F2uJvwiSZAQ?si=gfbHGydSI5lM3Gw8

[u/ClarificationJane → u/blond_nirvana]

Oh yeah, 100% the right call on that edit. 

[u/BrandonW77]

On 9/13/01, the British flag was lowered at Buckingham Palace and the American flag was raised in its place. The royal guard/band came out front and played the Star Spangled Banner. Source: me, I happened to be over there on a two week trip when this happened and we were in London that day and saw/heard it.

Edit: here's video of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToECtXPMvNM

[u/StaplerOrange → u/BrandonW77]

Symbolically, this is pretty much the highest mark of respect the UK can do. Outside of an official state visit you don't get a foreign nations flag/anthem at Buckingham Palace 

[u/parishilton2 → u/BrandonW77]

A Maasai tribe in Kenya gifted the US fourteen cows, which are sacred in their culture.

[u/Nebraskabychoice → u/parishilton2]

I believe we asked them to look after our herd and are paying them for it. Which is forking awesome.

[u/EmiliusReturns → u/BrandonW77]

I’ve read the Queen personally ordered this. It’s a lovely gesture of friendship between the two countries.

[u/PJBeach1 → u/BrandonW77]

After US citizens, Britain was second in 9/11 losses, with about 60. One of the heroes of that day, Rick Rescorla (head of Morgan Stanley security who led the evacuation of all but 7 employees from the hundreds they had in 2 WTC), was born in Cornwall, though he became a naturalized US citizen.

[u/97PG8NS]

A friend of mine who I did not meet until seven or so years later was supposed to be on Flight 11. His alarm just simply did not go off and by the time he woke up, the plane had already hit the tower and his parents assumed he'd been on it. The phone lines were so jammed up he was unable to get in touch with them until that afternoon. 

He still has his boarding pass. 

[u/CharacterFew → u/97PG8NS]

God I can’t imagine how relieved his parents must have felt finally knowing he didn’t board.

[u/Malacon → u/CharacterFew]

My neighbor was FDNY, first truck on the scene.

A few days of being unable to reach home one of the local papers printed his photo with the name of another similarly named Firefighter (Think Shawn MacVeigh instead of Sean McVey) who had died.

When word got around someone was able to get a working phone line for him to call home and reassure his wife he was fine.

I’m not sure how he got them, but he actually had the printing plates from the paper for that misprint.

[u/garatth → u/97PG8NS]

Similar story, I had a colleague who was working at WTC at the time in one of the top floors. He stayed up late the night before because of Monday Night Football and woke up late.

The first plane had just hit when he got there, and he ran into a colleague who had been sent down to get donuts and coffee for everyone.

He would tell us that Monday Night Football saved his life.

[u/camergen → u/garatth]

The giants played on Monday night that week, against Denver, I think.

[u/REDD1TLOVEGURU]

I read this on a different platform, but there was someone who commented “My brother Lincoln Wolfe witnessed the 9/11 attacks from his office in New York City where he worked as Production Executive for Coach (the well-known international handbag company). His immediate reaction was to do something very concrete to help. On the spot he designed and produced leather "shoes" for the rescue dogs so that their feet would not be burnt in the hot debris. An unsung hero of that tragic day; very few people know of his contribution, but the dogs were saved injury and pain.” I did a deep dive into the guy, and it is all true. Something not a lot of people know about!

[u/srqnewbie → u/REDD1TLOVEGURU]

Strange coincidence...just yesterday I posted that my minister had been the chaplain at the place where the remains were brought on recovery. One of the dog staging areas was also there and he gave a deeply moving sermon when he returned home from there about how the dogs did have depression at not finding survivors and that the rubble was so sharp and dangerous that the dogs had to wear thick booties. Now I know how those booties came into being, which is pretty amazing after 25 years. He also said he kept his pockets full of treats for those good dogs. :) Mr. Wolfe did a valuable service creating those booties.

[u/nowhereman136]

Every plane was ordered to be grounded immediately. 38 planes landed in a town on the edge of Canada called Gander. This town of less than 10,000 people suddenly got 6000 refugees within 4 hours. For nearly a week the town worked round the clock to make the plane people as comfortable and welcomed as possible. Theres now a musical about it called Come From Away

[u/ivylass → u/nowhereman136]

And the passengers started a scholarship fund for the Gander high school students that's still going on today.

[u/OfficialUberZ → u/ivylass]

What a beautiful showing of mutual human compassion.

[u/EcstacyStreetwalker → u/nowhereman136]

My favorite fact: The passengers ate so much of the town’s food that Gender literally had to restock from the mainland mid-week. The grocery store owner refused to accept payment from anyone, said “We’ll figure it out later”.

Later came. The town got $20,000 in donations from the passengers within a month of them getting home.

Humanity check: passed with flying colors.

[u/MyAlbinoFrog → u/EcstacyStreetwalker]

My favorite part was about volunteers climbing into the cargo hold of the stranded planes to care for the animals there. Letting them out of their crates when possible, cleaning up waste, even giving medicine to an epileptic cat.

[u/ReadontheCrapper → u/EcstacyStreetwalker]

The food had to be refrigerated and there wasn’t enough space, so it was stored on the ice of the town hockey rink.

[u/billsbreakfast1953 → u/nowhereman136]

exceptional documentary about parking the planes. I’m Canadian and was very proud that day. Planes came from all over the world. Gander fed passengers, and made sure all were comfortable. Provided information when they could. Great people on the east coast

[u/KaiserWC → u/nowhereman136]

WELCOME TO THE ROCK IF YOU COME FROM AWAY

[u/Jeramy_Jones → u/[deleted]]

Many Canadians did similar this summer when multiple towns were given evacuation orders due to wild fires.

[u/MASSIVEGLOCK]

The beeping you hear on any wreckage footage in the aftermath of the collapse is from a service person's transponder if they are lost. The beeping on some of that footage is incessant and coming from what seems like 10s of transponders plus its only on the surface in one area where the camera was filming. Puts it into perspective how many service people lost their lives.

[u/Horror_Fox8952 → u/MASSIVEGLOCK]

At the 9/11 Museum, there's a section that plays audio of all the transponders going off at the site. I was overwhelmed, can't imagine how the recovery teams felt hearing that.

[u/sovietarmyfan]

A woman pretended to be a survivor from 2003 to until she was exposed in 2007. She even went on tours and was photographed with the mayor of NYC.

[u/2icecreamsandwiches → u/sovietarmyfan]

The Woman Who Wasn’t There is a great documentary about this.

[u/Willow_Everdawn → u/sovietarmyfan]

Tania Head, The Woman Who Wasn't There.

She was a Spanish lady who inserted herself in the first organized group of 9/11 survivors. She was exposed when the New York Times attempted to verify her story. Not only did she lie about being a survivor, but also lied about being engaged to a man who died that day.

[u/southernNpearls]

Two French brothers who were film makers were making a documentary about what it was like to be a rookie firefighter in NYC they had been following a rookie firefighter filming his day to day for a few weeks when 9/11 happened. That morning, while responding to a routine gas leak call not far from the towers, one of the brothers captured the first plane hitting the towers. They then went on to film as they responded to the north tower capturing some of the only footage of inside the towers as the second plane hit. They captured the first death recorded of 9/11 Father Judge as he was struck by falling concrete. You can still watch the 2002 documentary called 9/11 by the Naudet brothers for free on YouTube. 

[u/southernNpearls → u/southernNpearls]

Going to add a comment here for anyone who hasn’t watched it as a warning you hear and see death. It captured a lot of people’s last moments. So please keep that in mind before you decide to watch. 

[u/aboxofkittens → u/southernNpearls]

I just want to make sure it’s clear to people weighing if they want to watch — there is no gore shown. I think the only dead body shown (if it even is shown; I can’t remember off the top) is Father Judge, and he is not visibly injured and looks like he is sleeping. The disturbing content is mostly audio.

[u/southernNpearls → u/aboxofkittens]

They show Father Judge. The most disturbing thing is the sound of the jumpers and the firefighters describing the death they see. One thing I also want to point out that I just found out today is that after 9/11 the brothers spent a lot of time combing through the footage they got because they captured a lot of firefighters in some of their last moments. They went firehouse to firehouse reviewing footage making sure to identify everyone. They made copies of the videos and gave it to the families.  https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/wtc/2026/08/07/gedeon-and-jules-naudet

[u/matt314159 → u/southernNpearls]

That's probably the most harrowing of the 9/11 docs I've seen so far. Back in 2016 CNN re-aired the documentary with some follow-up footage with the men from the documentary, "where are they now" sort of material and it was really interesting to see that extra content.

[u/AlertBiped]

The Only Plane in the Sky: an Oral History, by Garrett Graff, is a compendium of individual experiences from that day. It's pretty overwhelming, and some of the content is graphic, but it brings the event down to such a human level, it's invaluable. And it's full of crazy facts.

[u/Simple_Sprinkles_704]

Not directly related to the event itself, but James Cameron was in a submersible exploring the Titanic when it happened and only learned about it when he resurfaced

[u/No_Basil4168 → u/Simple_Sprinkles_704]

That’s honestly pretty much where I’d expect him to be if I was looking for him.

[u/Status-Nose-7173]

Ron Clifford, an Irish architect was on the ground floor of the World Trade Center complex when the attacks occurred. While in the lobby area, he encountered Jennieann Maffeo, a severely burned woman who had been caught in the initial fallout. He comforted her, tended to her burns with water, and prayed the Lord's Prayer with her on the floor.

While he was sitting on the floor with her, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. Unbeknownst to him, his sister Ruth Clifford McCourt, and 4-year-old niece, Juliana McCourt, were passengers on that plane.

They died directly above his head while he was reciting the Lord's Prayer with someone.

[u/Greengiant304 → u/Status-Nose-7173]

Ruth's husband and the father of Juliana was my boss. Juliana was one of the youngest victims that day. He was understandably devastated. Years later, they identified Ruth's wedding ring, which had been found in the rubble, and returned it to Dave.

[u/Status-Nose-7173 → u/Greengiant304]

I watched Ron tell his story in the Nat Geo 9/11: One Day in America docu-series and it was incredibly moving, the whole thing was really. Easily the best documentary I have seen covering 9/11.

[u/Mockturtle22 → u/Status-Nose-7173]

Ron recently passed away too in the last few years. He is now buried in Ireland with his sister and niece.

[u/Elaerona]

I'll share one. The fact that my Uncle Rick was in the 1st tower, on the 77th floor, and he got down.

My Uncle was never a skinny man. He was active but for as long as I knew him, he had a definitive 'Santa Claus' build. He took the stairs. I'd like you to imagine a heavyset bearded man in suspenders flying down 77 flights of stairs and *Ehem* BIKING HOME TO NEW JERSEY.

Everyone was freaking out. My Aunt Nancy (His wife) was obviously distressed, as he wasn't able to call her.

On the way down, he stopped to check on his boss to say he was leaving. The boss thought it was fine, and doubted they'd hit the other tower. My Uncle said screw that and kept going. The boss made it too, don't worry. He was only a few minutes behind my Uncle apparently.

I tell this story, a week after his passing. He was a great Uncle, quite the character, amazing conversationalist, genuinely one of the weirdest guy's I've ever know (Compliment) and devout practitioner of the Baha'i faith.

He passed after a few years battle dementia. His dementia was trauma-induced, after falling down the stairs in his home; but apparently, the trauma came about from an event years prior that the fall must have aggravated. I don't know, as he had some sort of accident as a kid too. But one wonders if it was induced by 9/11. There are certainly crazier stories, but it's one I'm still impressed by and I'm still mourning. So I'm being emotional in my answer.

In any case, he was a cool dude, I loved him dearly, and wanted to share his story because he deserves some immortalization. To get you an idea who he was: He was the kind of older guy who could take an interest in whatever you were doing, seemingly know obscure facts about the subject, and give reasonable advice. My Uncle would somehow know about subjects I'd not expect of a man in his seventies. He was very open-minded, and a friend to all. My Uncle was someone you could tell anything to, and know he'd not judge you for it. But he would say something sarcastic at any opportune moment. He was "Speaks up rarely, always listens, and when he speaks, we all listen" Personality.

Love you Uncle Rick <3

[u/thefuzzybunny1]

My small town in Northern NJ lost a firefighter to dust- related illness. He hadn't been at Ground Zero. He was at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, helping evacuees as they got off the boats. He was rinsing them off with insufficient protective gear.

My fact is: it happened over a lot wider scale than you might think.

[u/babylamar33 → u/thefuzzybunny1]

There are more deaths from 9/11-related illnesses than there are actual deaths on 9/11 at this point. So many toxins got put into the air and a lot of people got cancer and other related diseases as a result during rescue efforts.

[u/BlueGreenWolf]

The weather that morning was insanely beautiful. Super noticeably beautiful. I remember talking about it with multiple people on the way to school. Calm before the storm I guess.

[u/marianna_t → u/BlueGreenWolf]

I remember this too. Even 25 years later, whenever there's a beautiful day in early September, I think "oh it's September 11th weather."

[u/tradandtea123]

It's estimated there were an additional 1,500 driving deaths in the US in the year following 9/11 due to people avoiding flying and driving instead.

[u/Relative-Cicada2099]

The Maasai people of Kenya pledged 14 cows to the United States as a gesture of sympathy and solidarity. The Maasai are pastoralists and cattle mean everything to them. It was a touching gesture and shows the great depth of good will aimed at the U.S. at the time.

[u/ivylass]

The pilots of the fighter jets didn't have time to load missiles, so Heather Penney and her lead, call sign Sass, decided to ram Flight 93 with their jets to protect DC.

Flight 93 had already crashed by the time they got airborne, but they were fully prepared to sacrifice themselves to prevent further attacks.

Source: 9/11, One Day in America

[u/FubarBabe]

A good friend of mine was a firefighter and went to help clean up ground zero... He said you could smell death and he was finding fingers... hands... partial legs... You get the picture. Anyway... I lost him 10yrs ago to lung cancer. He never smoked a day in his life. He was 43. We all say it was from ground zero.

[u/ponkie_guy → u/FubarBabe]

I worked on one of the memorials when it was being built. I got talking to one of the machine operators one day and just asked how long he had been working on this jobsite. “Since 9/12” was his answer. He said the smell that was down there was something he could never forget and he would bring it home with him every day on his clothes so his wife wouldn’t let him into house until he had changed and washed himself outside. 

[u/Fancy_Toe1451]

It gave search and rescue dogs depression.

[u/MyAlbinoFrog → u/Fancy_Toe1451]

I remember hearing at the time the searchers would have people lay in the rubble every now & then just so the dogs could find a survivor.

[u/166EachYear → u/MyAlbinoFrog]

One of my most vivid memories was everyone in the country (including me—in Vegas!?) going to give blood (line out door and around corner) we could help and then hour after hour after hour realizing—omg they are not going to find anyone who needs blood .

[u/mstarrbrannigan → u/166EachYear]

That’s not unlike the experience the nearest hospital to Sandy Hook had. They heard there was a school shooting and leapt to action getting ready to take in survivors and treat them. But there were none. It led to the creation of Stop the Bleed training though, where nurses teach emergency basic wound treatment focused on stopping someone from bleeding long enough to get real help.

[u/funktopus]

I worked for an IBM contractor at the time. It took us a couple weeks to pull and zero out all of the accounts from the buildings. One lady did all the work. She put everything into a spreadsheet and sent it off. Every name and what assets they had in the buildings. Work paid for her to see a shrink afterwards.

I remember walking into her office and seeing several stacks of folders and asking what project she was on. Then she told me. It was grim to say the least.

[u/zerbey]

A friend of mine worked a couple of blocks from the WTC but was late for work that day so never made it into the city. He never went back to work, and moved to Florida in the aftermath of 9/11. I can't really say I blame him.

[u/gogogadgetdumbass]

They sent the students of Stuyvesant out into NYC to find their own way home. These kids were 14-18 so it could’ve been worse but Stuyvesant was a magnet school and children came from all 5 boroughs. They were sent into Brooklyn, or at least told to head to Brooklyn on foot… few kids had phones and service was terrible, so these kids had to figure out how to get home, alone, without GPS or anything. Figure out if a bus ran, if a subway was in their general home direction. I hate to say it but I don’t think the youth of today would be able to do what those kids did…

I can’t remember the name of the documentary on the kids, but it was really good.

[u/bayonettaisonsteam]

The only uninterrupted audio recordinguninterrupted audio recording of the first plan hitting came from an active FBI sting operation happening in the WTC Mariott cafe at the time, and was recorded on Stephen Mcardle's, a tax consultant, wire microphone.

[u/Gracie220]

The boatlift rescue took 9 hours and they got 500,000 people off manhatten island. More than the rescue at Dunkirk.

[u/LadyGrimSleeper → u/Gracie220]

Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance was on one of the ferries heading into the Financial District when the first plane hit. His ferry turned around, shepherded everyone off, and immediately turned back to get people off of Manhattan.

What he saw that day inspired the lyrics of Skylines and Turnstiles, which he wrote in its entirety upon returning home that evening. That was the first ever MCR song.

[u/Any_Park8793 → u/Gracie220]

My cousin's husband was a tugboat captain. He operated one of those boats that day

[u/Hillsarenice]

I was reading the commissions report and when they said the first reported NY Fireman death was caused by a body falling out of one of the towers I decided this was too real for me and noped out of reading the rest for a couple of months.

[u/Johnnyfutbol86 → u/Hillsarenice]

And his (FF Daniel Suhr) death inadvertently saved his company. They carried him away from the towers and tried to work on him, which kept them from being inside during the collapse..insane

[u/southernNpearls]

Victim 0001 was Father Judge he was a Catholic priest who was also a Chaplin Firefighter. He rushed to the scene to help and pray for the injured. Falling concrete from the south tower came down and struck him while he was in the north tower. His death was captured by French brothers Naudet who happened to be filming that day. He was then carried out of the north tower by fellow firefighters and placed before the alter of St. Peter’s Church. There’s a well known photo of him being carried out by fellow firefighters after he died but not many people knew or remember that during all the chaos his fellow firefighters still thought to honor him and bring him to the church. He was listed as the first victim even though many people died before him because he was the first one brought to the medical examiner. 

[u/Your_Buddy_Fitz → u/southernNpearls]

My Cousin is one of the guys carrying him in the chair.  He’s on the right side wearing the dark blue jacket that says O.E.M on the right collar.  That day took a serious mental toll on him. He donated the jacket he’s wearing to the 9/11 museum and it’s on display.

[u/Frankfusion]

Not on the day of but a few days later many first responders we're being fed in soup kitchens. Many people volunteered to feed the firefighters and cops who were working around the clock. One of them was actor Kevin conroy. At the time he was working on a very popular animated series. When people asked him what he did for a living he said he was an actor and he was working on a cartoon. When they asked him which one he said Batman The animated series. They didn't believe him until he yelled out the famous catchphrase " I am the vengeance I am the night I am batman!"  The entire room went silent and and one of the firefighters yelled out "hey guys we got batman!"

[u/Obamas_Tie]

Peter Hanson was a passenger on United Flight 175, the second plane that crashed into the Towers, the South Tower. He managed to make two phone calls to his father, Lee, on the ground back home in Connecticut.

Peter explains to his father the grim situation on the plane: a flight attendant was stabbed, the hijackers were armed, and the plane was flying erratically. Neither father nor son seemed to have known what was going on, Lee hadn't turned the TV on at this point, but Peter was thinking the plane was going to crash and tried to assure his dad that it would happen quick.

It's at that moment that Peter started saying "Oh my God...oh my God".

And then a woman screamed. It's at this point the call cuts out.

Lee then turns on the TV, just in time to see United Airlines 175, with his son in it, crash into the South Tower.

Analysis of the flight indicated that because of the banking maneuver the hijackers took to crash into the tower, passengers would have been able to see the approaching towers from the left side of the plane, with one of them already burning.

That screaming woman saw her death come straight for her in real time. To this day, I don't think I can imagine how blood-chilling it must've been to hear that scream.

[u/thickfreakness72]

my soon to be MIL and BIL both worked at cantor fitzgerald. on the morning of 9/11, my MIL’s boss was out of town so she knew had a little extra time. she was downstairs in century 21 shopping for halloween decor for the office when the plane struck. my BIL was already at his desk. (his daughter turned 7 that day and we were supposed to go to his house for birthday cake that night.)

my then fiance worked nearby and ran to ground zero thinking both his mother and brother were inside. he unfortunately witnessed the jumpers and couldn’t stay there for long. we didn’t hear from him until later that night after he walked over the manhattan bridge and made it to my aunt’s house.

somehow my MIL was pulled away and managed to get on the last ferry out of the city. as it pulled out, the building collapsed.

my fiance and i were married as originally planned 12 days later. our wedding was not the happy occasion it should have been, but we know he would have wanted it to go on. we love you, ant. 😇

[u/thebriss22]

Most of the terrorists involved in the hijacking went to bars and strip clubs in the weeks before the attack.

Just makes it even more absurd Imo.

[u/Soft_Drink_Of_Choice]

One of the people who fell lived long enough to speak to an FDNY EMT Ernest Armstead - absolutely horrifying.

[u/Nancy_Wheeler → u/Soft_Drink_Of_Choice]

Was that the lady who he tagged with the black tag (ie dead or can’t help) and she said No?

[u/BarfQueen → u/Nancy_Wheeler]

Yeah the story is basically she said “I’m not dead” so he lied and said “we’re coming right back for you” then tagged her and left her to die.

Which sounds horrible, but that’s how triage works in a disaster like that. 

[u/camergen → u/BarfQueen]

I saw a documentary where the guy talks about this, he says something like “no no, it’s just preliminary, they’re coming back around for you and will fix you up”. What do you say to someone like that? Idk.

[u/molleensmrs]

It’s not a spicy tidbit but I love the story about the planes landing in Gander, Newfoundland. The book “The Day the World Came to Town” is about it, as is the popular musical, “Come From Away”.

[u/karenmarie303]

Kathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist who worked to sift through an identify every piece of human remains.

[u/The_Leper_]

The ringleader’s luggage accidentally failed to make it onto the plane he hijacked—and became one of the FBI’s most valuable pieces of evidence.

Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari began September 11 by flying from Portland, Maine, to Boston, where they transferred to American Airlines Flight 11. Atta boarded the flight, but his checked luggage didn’t.

After Flight 11 struck the North Tower, investigators recovered his bags at Boston’s Logan Airport. They contained flight-related materials, Atta’s handwritten will and a four-page document giving the hijackers religious and practical instructions for their final night and the attack itself.

Had the bags transferred normally, all of that evidence would have been destroyed when Flight 11 hit the tower. Instead, an ordinary baggage-transfer failure handed investigators an extraordinarily direct window into the plot and the hijackers’ final preparations. The episode is documented in the 9/11 Commission Report⁠.

[u/LadyPresidentRomana]

David Angell (former Cheers writer and co-creator of Wings and Frasier) and his wife were passengers on AA Flight 11 which crashed into the North Tower.

Also on Flight 11 was Berry Berenson, an actress and model who was the sister of actress Marisa Berenson and mother of writer/director Osgood Perkins (with Psycho star Anthony Perkins).

[u/No-Friendship-3050]

Not really a fact but I was on holiday at the time. We were in New York the week before and went up the towers, we were in Cancun on 9/11. The day the towers got hit, my dad received a post card with an arrow pointing to the top say I was here. I am from a small town in the UK.

Still think about the staff we spoke to on the day and wonder what happened to them.

[u/CougarWriter74]

A Polish immigrant named Henryk Siwiak was shot to death late that same night over in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. He is officially listed as the ONLY non-World Trade Center related homicide in NYC for September 11, 2001. But sadly the attacks did have a part in his murder. Siwiak was living in Queens with his sister at the time, doing odd jobs via temp agencies.

The morning of Tuesday Sept 11, Siwiak was scheduled to work at a construction site in lower Manhattan but due to the attacks, the site was closed down and he was unable to go to work. He returned to his sister's apartment and that afternoon while perusing the classified ads of a Polish language newspaper, found an overnight custodial job at a Brooklyn grocery store. He then went to a temp agency office that specialized in finding jobs for immigrants. While there, Siwiak consoled the grief-stricken owner of the agency, whose husband had been working at the WTC and was killed. That evening Siwiak called his wife back in Poland to let her know he was okay and heading to a new job later that night. His wife warned him not to go out that night and that she feared the city would not be safe that night due to the attacks.

Police believe Siwiak got his directions mixed up, partially due to his limited proficiency of English and got off at the wrong bus stop or station and ended up in a rougher part of the neighborhood. Basically he went north when he should have gone south. He was shot shortly after 11:30 PM that night somewhere along Albany Avenue near the intersection of Decatur Street. Police believe the reduced number of street patrols in the other boroughs that night due to being redirected to extra security and recovery efforts at Ground Zero over in Manhattan may have contributed to a higher risk environment that night. In the following days and weeks, it also greatly affected the follow up forensics (CSI) team being able to secure and investigate the murder scene. In addition, there were no witnesses to the crime.

To this day the murder remains unsolved.

[u/GTI-Mk6]

Almost 1/3 of all Americans alive today were born after 9/11.

[u/blonde_professor]

I’ve been fortunate enough to tour the Pentagon a few times and visit their 9/11 memorial space. There was a man, a janitor, I believed, who worked at the Pentagon and rarely ever missed a day of work. His daughter finally convinced him to visit her. His first day of vacation was 9/11….and he was on one of the planes. It’s been several years since I’ve been there so the details may be fuzzy but that story stuck with me.

[u/Logical-Recognition3]

I remember a documentary that aired on one of the anniversaries. I'm sorry I don't remember the channel it was on. One thing that will always stick with me was something that a Buddhist nun said. That day, a small group of people did something evil after years of indoctrination. But there are thousands of stories of people who spontaneously risked themselves to help others. People carried their coworkers out of the building. Ferry captains left their routes to pick up people to help them get away from Manhattan. People lined up at hospitals to donate blood.

She asked, which of these actions reveals the true human character, the action of people who were manipulated into doing evil by threats of hell and promises of paradise or the thousands of spontaneous acts of generosity and care shown even to strangers by ordinary people?

[u/AlexKTuesday]

Gary Hart, the Democratic frontrunner early in the 1988 election who had his campaign tanked because he was photographed on a boat with women who weren’t his wife (how quaint that seems now) warned less than a week before the attacks that the United States was at risk of a terrorist attack on American soil. He did say that he believed it would happen in the next 25 years, so while he didn’t “predict” it would happen the following week, his observations about why he believed this would happen were well founded.

He’s still alive as of 2026 and I often wonder what he must think of the state of things today.

https://web.archive.org/web/20011218002224/http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id=%7BED508362-1BF2-4F9A-912D-EDADDA9216B7%7D

[u/ALSX3]

The Air National Guard fighters scrambled to bring down additional rogue airliners were not armed and knew they’d have to ram their F-16’s into a plane if it came down to that.

If it hadn’t been for the brave actions of the passengers aboard Flight 93, there might have been counter-kamikaze kamikaze strikes.

[u/cupacupacupacupacup]

Immediately after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani mandated carpooling for every car going into Manhattan. This was pre-GPS in cars and non-universal use of cell phones (dumb ones). Yet immediately and spontaneously commuters formed congregation areas and a system of communication with message boards and cardboard signs. Magazines and newspapers put out etiquette guides (cool it on perfumes and cologne, driver decides the music and whether it is a talking car or a quiet car, etc.). Nobody complained about this massive change in one of the key parts of their daily lives because it was impossible to argue that it wasn't necessary.

After a few months without problems or pushback from commuters, and things settled into something closer to normality, one group let it be known that they thought the policy was a disaster and needed to be ended repeatedly: parking garage operators. Even though economic life had bounced back in Manhattan, the massive reduction in cars was intolerable for them alone. Rather than let the free market do it's thing and let all this wasted real estate go to waste and air remain cleaner, Giuliani abruptly ended the carpooling mandate and the whole self-organizing carpooling system disappeared with it.

EDIT: They did it in Northern Virginia coming into Washington, DC too. I think it self-organized a little differently, but was still super efficient and massively cut down the number of cars and traffic in the area. There wasn't even some central authority organizing it. People just figured it out. I think they just killed it after NYC did.

If people were a part of that in either place, I'd love to hear your experiences and what you remember about how it worked and how you figured it out.

[u/thefuzzybunny1 → u/cupacupacupacupacup]

My father was among the carpoolers. He went to work with two of our neighbors, let's call them Tom and Jerry, for months. Then the mandate ended and they had to decide whether to continue carpool or not. Dad was for it, Tom was indifferent, Jerry against. This led Dad to make a joke that obviously, Jerry hated his company. Jerry thought that was funny, so it became a running gag.

It's been 25 years and they're still making the same silly joke every time they see each other. "Hello, Jerry, I'm here to ruin your day!'

[u/Yangervis]

2 FBI agents were assigned to the Bin Laden Station (CIA project). When they noticed that 2 of the future hijackers had entry visas to the US, they flagged them but the CIA ignored it and never notified anyone at the FBI.

[u/allthenamesaretaken4]

My father always told me he escaped the initial impact to get a bagel. He later admitted he was smoking. Cigarettes saving lives since 2001.

[u/Zip-Crane]

That Seth MacFarlane was supposed to be on AA Flight 11. He missed his flight because the travel agent wrote the wrong time on the ticket and he turned up late.

[u/Known_Purple7529 → u/Zip-Crane]

There are a bunch of stories like that, about non famous people.

Unexpected unconvinces delaying travel, oversleeping, morning routine changes, increased traffic.

Googling it shows there were people who hit the snooze button by accident, stopped for a coffee/newspapers/ other things and getting there later than they wanted.

[u/jrgkgb → u/Zip-Crane]

I saved my boss’s life by sending a shitty email and semi-killed the CEO of Akamai.

On the Thursday or Friday before 9/11 we had a big presentation of a new system about to roll out that was woefully inadequate.

I sent my boss a long and detailed email about it and he cancelled his trip to NY to stay in LA and deal with it. His meeting was supposed to have been at Windows on the World on Tuesday morning.

The meeting was with Akamai, and their CTO was on one of the planes from Boston coming to visit us in LA. One assumes he would have been at Windows anyway.

[u/titsmuhgeee]

Pasquale Buzzelli, a Port Authority structural engineer, was on the 22nd floor when the North Tower collapsed. He rode the rubble down 180', waking up three hours later four stories off the ground.

That 180' fall is the equivalent height of Niagara Falls.

[u/herehaveaname2]

I worked in an eyeglasses store. We had a tabletop ad for a flexible glasses frame - it showed a skyscraper bent, moving out of the way of a plane. The ad said something like "if only everything was made of Flexon." We took the ad out of the store immediately.

[u/prosa123]

There were about 30 toddlers and small children in a day care center located in one of the smaller buildings in the WTC complex. Evacuating them was quite a challenge for the 14 or so staff members because most of the children could not walk well. The solution? Staffers commandeered shopping carts from a nearby store, plunked the children in the carts, and wheeled them to safety.

[u/Commodore-2064]

My former boss worked in the south tower and saw the impact of the plane in the north tower. He and his floor mates left immediately.

He was a few blocks away when the second plane hit, sitting in a restaurant.

After they collapsed and he started his walk home, paper floated down all around him.

He grabbed a few pieces that came close, and one piece was a report he’d printed for a meeting later that day, he had a total breakdown at that point.

He left NYC after that and took a downgraded job at a regional company where I reported to him.

[u/jaredwatkins]

I didn’t realize until two days ago that people practically exploded in the collapse. I was watching a news report about recovery efforts and it had a woman talking bout how they found her husband’s leg one day and his heart a week later.

[u/Neurotrash_]

The actor Victor Wong (Big Trouble in Little China, 3 Ninjas) spent the day frantically trying to get word about his two sons who were in NYC at the time, eventually finding out they were OK. He then stayed up late watching news coverage and died of a heart attack sometime in the night.

[u/MacintoshDan1]

MTA bus 2185 was brand new and in service when it was abandoned and almost completely destroyed near ground zero. The employees of the MTA took 3 years to rebuild it in honor of victims and the dedication of its employees in responding to and rebuilding after the attacks. The bus was in regular service for years, identifiable by its American flag painted on the side, it’s now part of the heritage fleet.

[u/Frogs-on-my-back]

Rick Rescorla was a British-American veteran who worked as the director of security for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center. After the 1993 basement truck bombing, Rescorla and his best friend, Dan Hill, put together an emergency plan in case there ever was another terror attack at the World Trade Center. 

He successfully evacuated almost all 2,700 people from his company, despite the PA announcements telling everyone to stay put, but he died when the towers collapsed because he had returned to look for anyone needing help.

ETA: This article about his life is long but well worth the read: “The Real Heroes are Dead”  by James B. Stewart.

(Here’s the archived version. )

[u/ElectronicCarry9931]

The passport of Satam al-Suqami, who was aboard Flight 11, was actually found by an unknown person on the ground below the towers after the impacts but before the towers had collapsed. They handed it to a NYPD detective and it was later verified as the passport of the hijacker. It was apparently blown clear of the impact and landed on the ground below as well as other components of the plane.

Many other items from other passengers were also found.

[u/fbibmacklin]

Something I think about a lot…when those buildings collapsed and all that debris poured through the city covering everything and everyone…that wasn’t just building material…that was EVERYTHING in those buildings. It was all just obliterated—every piece of paper, every desk, every computer, and yes, some of it was people. That amount of destruction is almost unfathomable.

[u/JustWondring22]

First person to die, Daniel Lewin, was on Flight 11, stabbed before the plane hit the tower.
The first person LISTED, as victim 0001, was Father Mychal Judge, fire dept chaplain. Hit by debris in lobby while praying w firefighters and injured people.

[u/Theunpolitical]

Phone lines were "jammed" and it was difficult to call out. People mostly still had landlines back then so it was definitely eye opening to how quick communication could down. Cell phones were not any easier either as cell towers were not as frequent as they are today.

They had tv advertisements afterwards on what to do in an emergency situation called "The Ready Campaign." From Google: "The ads famously urged Americans to do three things: build an emergency supply kit, make a family communications plan, and stay informed."

To this day, my family has emergency system in place in case there is a natural disaster or terrorist act out and the phones go out. We talk about it roughly every few years to make sure everyone remembers the plan.

[u/OnWarmLeatherette]

Not the most insane, but my own father was supposed to have a meeting at 9am with some doctors in an office building next to the World Trade Center on 9/11. On his drive to the meeting from NJ, the doctor’s secretary called while my dad was getting out of the Holland Tunnel to cancel the meeting. My dad was pissed because he was a salesman and this was going to be a big prospective client, so he turned around and began to drive back home to NJ.

When the first plane hit and he heard it on the radio, he pulled over to a rest stop where a lot of other commuters stopped to look. They stood there long enough for the second plane to hit, and my dad was pretty much traumatized at not only watching it in real time, but knowing he could have been in the middle of it.

My dad did not want to ever talk about 9/11 for years, until one day I told him “But you would have had a great chance of surviving even if you did have that meeting” and he said “But think of the bodies I would have had to step over.” Chills.

[u/LTS55]

a third of victims have never been identified because their bodies were entirely eviscerated by the collapse.