What happened on 9/11?

On September 11, 2001, terrorists flew hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest foreign attack in American history. Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers boarded four transcontinental flights that morning. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 with 92 people aboard, was hijacked shortly after takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport. The hijackers crashed it into the 93rd through 99th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time, killing all aboard and hundreds in the building. United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767 with 65 people, was hijacked from Boston as well and crashed into the 77th through 85th floors of the South Tower at 9:03 a.m., live on television.

American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 with 64 people that had departed from Washington Dulles, was crashed into the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing all aboard plus 125 people in the building. United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 with 44 people that had departed from Newark, was hijacked over Ohio. Passengers used in-flight phones to learn about the other attacks and rushed the cockpit, leading the hijackers to crash the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. The flight's intended target is believed to have been the United States Capitol or the White House.

The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 9:59 a.m. and the North Tower at 10:28 a.m., bringing down World Trade Center 7 in late afternoon as well. The collapse killed thousands of office workers and 343 New York firefighters and 23 police officers responding to the disaster. President George W. Bush, learning of the attacks while reading to a second-grade class in Sarasota, Florida, was flown aboard Air Force One on a circuitous route before returning to Washington that evening to address the nation from the Oval Office. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all civilian flights nationwide for the first time in history, and military fighters patrolled American skies. The attacks were the work of al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden, who had been sheltered by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.