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Thread: On this day something happened

  1. #1
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    Default On this day something happened

    A topic for people to reflect on and share about events that occurred on a particular day, in the past... personal events that were significant to you, or major events that were well known to others (or should be).

  2. #2
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    Later today (10.46pm on the Eastern coast of Australia), was the time 20 years ago that changed the world, and was a day that us older fans will remember quite well, as one of those events that everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when it happened.
    (and if you didn't know about it, just about every free-to-air TV channel has been playing multiple programs and documentaries all week about it)

    That exact time was when the first plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers, which was 8.46am in New York, September 11th, 2001.

    I didn't realise it was that early here (before midnight), as I remember waking up the next morning (apparently September 12th was a Wednesday) and turned on my computer to log into telnet(?) for the Transformers chat channel, and the first line of new dialogue popped up as, "Tower 7 has just collapsed"... and it was a puzzling thing to have these Transformers fans talking about something that I didn't recognise as being Transformers related. So after about a minute or so of comments about that and people mentioning that certain people they knew were safe, I eventually turned on the TV to see news coverage of the New York Trade Center site, and noticed that every channel was covering it (this was back when there was only 5 national free TV channels, and none of them wanted to be the first to stop covering it, so it wasn't until the mid afternoon that some entertainment programs started up again).
    Since this was before social media was really a thing, and the internet was still a fairly young beast at that time, it was quicker and easier to get the catch-up information from the live news coverage on TV than searching for it online.
    Since Tower 7 (the third largest building in the 7-building World Trade Center site) collapsed 8 & half hours after the first plane hit Tower 1, I must have gotten up shortly after 7.21am (which was 5.21pm in New York, when it collapsed)... and since I was between jobs at that time, I was at home all day and stayed online for a few hours reading the comments online of those who were from the area, or knew people from there (remembering that this was before facebook and twitter... and I think usenet was still the main form of "messageboard" styled interaction. And even back then, I think I still knew more American fans than local fans, so it was more interesting to see what they were saying, from their closer perspective.
    If I had been working at the time, or had my current sleeping habits, I think I would have been up when TV channels here would have started covering it by midnight, and then watching it throughout the night, but by the time I switched on the next morning, it was already all over, but every channel spent the entire day covering the events, replaying them over and over.
    Despite all of my trips over to America, I never saw the trade center towers, as I had only been over there 3 times at this time, but my trip in July 2001 had me using one of the NY Airports for a change over of flights to and from North Carolina... but I doubt I even saw NY City while in the planes I was on, as the JFK airport is about 20kms from NY city and the planes would have flown out over the ocean before turning towards their intended destination.

    Anyone else old enough, remember what they were doing when they first found out about the attack?

  3. #3
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    I still remember watching live as the second plane with the second tower as I was staying up late to watch Star Trek Voyager.

    So much needless waste of life on both sides since that day.
    I have a list of all G1 characters that have been released in CHUG form. You can find it here. Please feel free to let me know if I got anything wrong so I can fix it.

  4. #4
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    I just remember lying down on the floor, watching the news reports on the TV.

    Sure I was 6, but I can still remember where I was when I heard about 9/11.
    I'll update this when I'm needing help finding particular figures

  5. #5
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    I remember getting up for school. I was in year 8 I think. Dad told me the United states would be going to war soon. I remember watching it on tv and seeing those poor people jumping to their deaths. School was really weird. The teachers didn't want to hide it from us, everyone knew by now. I remember my woodwork teacher telling us that no one really knew what had happened, but tried to assure everyone that we'd be safe. It was a surreal day.
    ~

  6. #6
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    I was in bed when it was on the news, I did get up because my parents were watching. I was in year 10. I do remember thinking I'd say jokes the next morning to my school mates, but when I got there it didn't feel right. World changed that day

  7. #7
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    To fill in some time between Rove and Star Trek, I put in my VHS copy of Transformers The Movie and watched through the Battle of Autobot City(!!). I stopped it and saw the infamous Sandra Sully coverage of reports of a plane having hit the tower. Then I stayed up to maybe 4am watching the ongoing coverage, worried more attacks were coming. The second hit was shocking, the building collapse was shocking, I couldn’t look away.

    The memorial in New York is worth a visit, was there in September 2019 a few days before the anniversary. It’s a very moving tribute. The first time I visited NY in 2007 and visited the area, still being cleared, it was terribly upsetting to be in the place where such horror occurred.

  8. #8
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    I remember I was working on an uni assignment that night (Perth time), planning to pull an all-nighter. The chat program (can't remember if it was icq or msn messenger...) was on between me and some of my uni classmates. Then one of my uni classmates told us to switch on the television, and I saw one of the World Trade Centre towers on fire and smoke. Needless to say I lost my focus on working on the assignment...

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paulbot View Post
    The memorial in New York is worth a visit, was there in September 2019 a few days before the anniversary. It’s a very moving tribute. The first time I visited NY in 2007 and visited the area, still being cleared, it was terribly upsetting to be in the place where such horror occurred.
    I was in NYC in June 2007 (on the way to Rhode Island), but only got to within eye-sight of the World Trade Center site, on a tour bus one block away... and if I had stayed another day, I would have gone to have a closer look.
    Even though it was almost 6 years after the destruction of the buildings, and the site was cleared by May 2002 (10 months later), bureaucracy and committees dragged out the beginning of construction of the new buildings for 5 years. Aside from Tower 7 which wasn't on the actual WTC site, nothing significant started on the actual site until 2006, and took another 5 years until the first above-ground structures were completed. So even if I had have been at the site on that trip in June 2007, I probably wouldn't have seen much more than what I did from a block away.
    (the couple of photos that I managed to take as the tour bus was driving past showed a fair bit of debris on the site, with a number of cranes, so they had definitely started doing something... it would just be another 4 years after that until the memorial site would be ready)

  10. #10
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    I remember I couldn’t get very close in 2007 or 2009 but by 2009 there were viewing areas and memorial walls with the names of the victims.

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