50 Fun Facts About September 11 Attacks

The September 11 attacks fell on which day of the week, the least-traveled day for American Airlines?

Tuesday was a light travel day, and Flight 93 was only about one-fifth full. The plotters' own code name for the operation referred to the day of the week.

George W. Bush was visiting a second-grade classroom in which state when the September 11 attacks began?

Florida's Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota was hosting the president for a reading lesson. After an aide whispered the news, he stayed with the children for about seven more minutes.

After passengers fought back on September 11, Flight 93 crashed in a field near which Pennsylvania borough?

Shanksville lies about 20 minutes' flying time from Washington, D.C., where the hijackers were headed. A 42-minute takeoff delay gave passengers time to learn of the earlier crashes by phone.

Both planes that struck the World Trade Center on September 11 had taken off from which city's airport?

Boston's Logan International Airport saw the two flights leave 15 minutes apart. The lead hijacker's luggage missed the plane and was found there, helping the FBI identify the group quickly.

Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were citizens of which country, also the birthplace of Osama bin Laden?

Saudi Arabia was home to all but four of the hijackers. Two came from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Egypt and Lebanon.

Which New York City mayor did Time name Person of the Year for 2001 after the September 11 attacks?

Rudy Giuliani was barred by term limits from running again and left office less than four months later. He had first made his name in the 1980s as a US attorney prosecuting Mafia bosses.

Which small Canadian town sheltered nearly 7,000 stranded air travelers, inspiring the musical Come from Away?

Gander had fewer than 10,000 residents when 38 wide-body jets were diverted to its airport on September 11. Locals housed and fed the passengers until American airspace reopened.

The September 11 boatlift off Manhattan moved more people than which 1940 evacuation, the Coast Guard's chief said?

Dunkirk was the comparison drawn by Coast Guard commandant James Loy. Ferries, sightseeing cruisers and private boats answered emergency radio calls to carry people off Lower Manhattan.

All four planes hijacked on September 11 were long-haul flights, heavy with fuel, bound for which state?

California was a full coast-to-coast trip away, so each plane carried a heavy fuel load. Three of the flights were headed for Los Angeles and Flight 93 for San Francisco.

President George W. Bush addressed Ground Zero rescue workers through what, three days after September 11?

A bullhorn in hand, Bush stood on a fire engine dug from the rubble beside Bob Beckwith, a firefighter retired for seven years who had bluffed his way past the barricades to help.

Which vice president took shelter in an emergency bunker beneath the White House during the September 11 attacks?

Dick Cheney reached the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the East Wing through a tunnel. For a period afterward he stayed at undisclosed locations, among them Camp David and his Wyoming home.

Which US defense secretary was in his Pentagon office when Flight 77 struck the building on September 11?

Donald Rumsfeld was on the far side of the building from the crash. He insisted on staying at his post afterward, sending his deputy to a backup command site instead.

Which US agency grounded every civilian flight over the country on September 11, diverting many to Canada?

The Federal Aviation Administration order was given by Ben Sliney, who was on his first day as its national operations manager. Inbound international flights were turned back or sent to Canada and Mexico.

Which Egyptian-born ringleader of the September 11 hijackers was at the controls of Flight 11?

Mohamed Atta had studied architecture at Cairo University before moving to Germany for graduate work. He was 33 on the day of the attacks.

Three of the four September 11 hijacker pilots had formed an al-Qaeda cell while students in which German city?

Hamburg's al-Quds Mosque is where the future pilots reportedly met. In 1999 the group set out to fight in Chechnya but was redirected to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda's leaders took them on.

Which regime ruling Afghanistan refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, prompting a US-led invasion in October 2001?

The Taliban said bin Laden was protected by Pashtun traditions of hospitality. They were driven from power within weeks, then retook Kabul in August 2021 as coalition troops left.

In which country did US Navy SEALs kill Osama bin Laden in May 2011, in a raid on a walled compound?

Pakistan's authorities were not notified before the operation. The compound in Abbottabad stood less than a mile from the country's top military academy.

Which president ordered the May 2011 raid by US Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder?

Barack Obama monitored the raid from the White House Situation Room with his national security team. His announcement that night echoed a pledge of justice George W. Bush had made to Congress in 2001.

Which alliance invoked its mutual defense clause, Article 5, for the first time after the September 11 attacks?

NATO declared the attacks on the United States an attack on all of its members. The clause had been written during the Cold War with a Soviet assault in mind.

Which British prime minister crossed the Atlantic to attend President Bush's September 20, 2001 address to Congress?

Tony Blair attended to express his country's solidarity. The speech is widely seen as the announcement of the global war on terrorism.

Which former New Jersey governor chaired the 9/11 Commission, with Lee Hamilton as his vice chairman?

Thomas Kean, a Republican, led a panel of five Democrats and five Republicans. He and Hamilton later wrote an account of the constraints they faced, titled Without Precedent.

Which former secretary of state was first named to chair the 9/11 Commission but resigned within weeks?

Henry Kissinger stepped down rather than disclose the clients of his consulting firm, as congressional Democrats had insisted. His intended vice chairman, George Mitchell, also withdrew over ties to his law firm.

Of the four kinds of government failure listed in the 9/11 Commission Report, which was called the most important?

Imagination topped the list because, the commissioners wrote, leaders had not understood the gravity of the threat. They noted that the danger barely came up during the 2000 presidential campaign.

The 9/11 Commission Report became a bestseller and, unusually for a government document, a finalist for which prize?

The National Book Award shortlist for nonfiction in 2004 included the report, which one New York Times reviewer praised as unusually clear and gripping for an official text.

Which adviser to President Bush at first declined to testify publicly to the 9/11 Commission, then did so under oath?

Condoleezza Rice argued that a national security adviser, who needs no Senate confirmation, should not have to testify under oath. She gave way and appeared before the panel in April 2004.

Which former White House counterterrorism chief began his 9/11 Commission testimony by apologizing to victims' families?

Richard Clarke told the families that their government had failed them. His memoir Against All Enemies, critical of the Bush White House, came out that same month, March 2004.

Whom did the 9/11 Commission Report call the principal architect of the attacks, captured in Rawalpindi in 2003?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the uncle of the man convicted over the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The two had worked together in Manila in 1994 on a plot to destroy a dozen airliners.

Which cabinet department, created in response to September 11, was first led by former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge?

Homeland Security brought 22 government agencies into a single organization when it opened in 2003. Ridge had been running a smaller White House office of the same name since October 2001.

Which law, signed six weeks after September 11, expanded US government surveillance of suspected terrorists?

The USA PATRIOT Act has a name that is itself an acronym, ending with Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. It passed the Senate by 98 votes to 1.

At which US naval base did a detention camp for al-Qaeda suspects open in January 2002, four months after September 11?

Guantanamo Bay has been leased from Cuba since 1903 under an agreement with no expiry date. The first twenty detainees arrived at its Camp X-Ray on 11 January 2002.

The World Trade Center's first tower ended which skyscraper's 40-year reign as the tallest in the world?

The Empire State Building lost the record to a tower that kept it for only two years, until Chicago's Sears Tower was finished in 1973.

Which Seattle-born architect designed the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, as well as the Pruitt–Igoe housing project?

Minoru Yamasaki, the son of Japanese immigrants, was picked by the Port Authority in 1962. Asked why he had not drawn a single 220-story tower, he joked that he wanted to keep the human scale.

Who led the 1993 van bombing beneath the World Trade Center and was later jailed for life in Colorado?

Ramzi Yousef hoped the blast would topple one tower into the other; instead it killed six people and injured over a thousand. He is a nephew of the man who later planned September 11.

Which restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower was the highest-grossing in the United States in 2000?

Windows on the World took in $37 million in its final full year. On September 11 it was hosting breakfast regulars and a financial technology conference when Flight 11 struck several floors below.

Which bond-trading firm, based on floors 101 to 105 of the North Tower, lost 658 employees on September 11?

Cantor Fitzgerald lost about two-thirds of its New York staff, more than any other employer. Days later it pledged a quarter of its profits for five years to the families of those killed.

Which Flight 93 passenger, an Oracle account manager, stayed on the line with a phone supervisor as the revolt began?

Todd Beamer recited the Lord's Prayer with the supervisor, Lisa Jefferson, before he and other passengers stormed the cockpit. They had voted on the plan first.

Which Franciscan friar and Fire Department chaplain was recorded as Victim 0001 of the September 11 attacks?

Mychal Judge was the first certified fatality because his body was the first recovered and taken to the medical examiner. A photograph of rescuers carrying him out became one of the day's best-known images.

Roughly how many people were killed in the September 11 attacks, the deadliest terrorist attack in history?

About 3,000 is the usual rounding of a toll of 2,977 victims, most of them at the World Trade Center. People from more than 90 countries were among the dead.

Which White House chief of staff whispered news of the second plane into President Bush's ear in a classroom?

Andrew Card later recalled telling the president that a second plane had hit and that America was under attack. He had served the first President Bush as transportation secretary.

Which New York City event, under way on the morning of September 11, was called off and rerun two weeks later?

A primary election to pick candidates for mayor had opened that morning, and the votes already cast were never counted. The rerun was held on September 25.

What did architect Michael Arad set in the footprints of the Twin Towers at the National September 11 Memorial?

Reflecting pools of about an acre each, ringed by waterfalls, fill the two squares. The victims' names are inscribed on bronze parapets around them.

By which name was One World Trade Center widely known until the Port Authority dropped it in 2009?

Freedom Tower was the colloquial name for a skyscraper whose 1,776-foot height points to the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. Its spire reached that mark in May 2013.

The Tribute in Light beams over Manhattan each September 11 are briefly switched off to protect which travelers?

Migrating birds are drawn into the beams and become trapped, so the 88 searchlights go dark for 20 minutes at a time to let them escape. More than a million birds have been affected.

Which comedian and Daily Show host campaigned for years for health care funding for September 11 first responders?

Jon Stewart gave a whole episode in December 2010 to the stalled Zadroga Act and was credited with helping it pass. He went back to Congress in 2019 to press for the victims' compensation fund.

The war begun in Afghanistan after September 11 overtook which conflict to become America's longest war?

The Vietnam War had been America's longest before Afghanistan overtook it. The final American flight left Kabul on 30 August 2021, nearly twenty years after the invasion.

The Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 National Memorial holds 40 of what, one per passenger and crew member?

Wind chimes of polished aluminum, each sounding a different tone, hang in the 93-foot concrete tower. It was the largest structure of its kind when it was built.

Which congresswoman cast the only vote in Congress against authorizing military force after September 11?

Barbara Lee argued that the resolution, passed 420 to 1 in the House, handed the president a blank check to wage war. The Senate approved it 98 to 0 the same day.

Which kind of tree, pulled burned from the World Trade Center rubble, grows at the memorial as the Survivor Tree?

A Callery pear, it was found in October 2001 and sent to a nursery in a Bronx park for care. The memorial's other trees are all swamp white oaks.

Which Frenchman, arrested in Minnesota in August 2001, was later convicted in a US civilian court over September 11?

Zacarias Moussaoui had aroused suspicion at a flight school before the FBI detained him on immigration charges. He was sentenced in 2006 to life in prison without parole.

Which Morgan Stanley security chief led some 2,700 colleagues out of the South Tower, then went back in for others?

Rick Rescorla had drilled staff in evacuations ever since the 1993 bombing, and he ignored an announcement telling workers to stay at their desks. He sang to keep people calm on the stairs.