September 11, 2001 Changed the World Forever

As the blood trickled down the flight attendant’s neck, they all prayed that they wouldn’t die. A dark skined man headed toward the front of the plane to claim his next victim. He slowly pressed the cold, red blade of a knife into the pilot’s neck. Many of those who saw screamed. They all knew, then, that they would die. Passengers felt the plane take some wild turns and they realized that they had turned around. Not long after this occurred to four planes, every single passenger died. Terrorists had taken over planes in America. Four planes, nineteen terrorists, and almost 3,000 dead people later, the United States of America has been changed forever.

On September 11, 2001, many people’s lives were changed. Not only Americans, but Muslims and Islamist alike, were affected. (A Nation Challenged 80). Family members and friends were lost, lives were taken away, and New York City was torn to pieces. Two planes hit the Twin Towers, otherwise known as the World Trade Center. One plane was flown into the Pentagon located in Virginia. One last plane was flown into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after being taken over by the passengers. The nineteen men who hijacked these planes were from the Islamist militant group known as al-Qaeda. (The 9/11 Commission Report). An editorial in the New York Times said, “It was one of those moments in which history splits, and we define the world as ‘before’ and ‘after’.”

The Pentagon is almost a city in itself. 23,000 people work there on an average day and

over 200,000 telephone calls are made daily through phones that are connected by 100,000 miles of telephone cable. (A Nation Challenged 24). American Airlines Flight 77 was intended to be flown from Washington to Los Angles, California....

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...ed and smoke filled buildings. He had thin gray, almost white, hair that had thinned over time. His eyes seemed to be sunken into his face, and his skin sagged. He looked younger than he truly was, and was acting like it too. He had a family at home, waiting on him to return, or at least praying that he would return. Mychal Judge was the Fire Department Chaplin at the New York Fire Department. He was not required to go to the scene, but chose to do so anyway. Father Judge had been kneeling, giving the last rites to a firefighter who had been killed by a falling body. Because, Mychal Judge was the first to be released from ground zero. This 68-year-old man’s death certificate bore the number one on September 11, 2001. (One Nation 70). September 11. 2001 changed America, and the world, forever. No one ever thought four planes and nineteen terrorist could do so much.