September 11 Attacks
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50 free September 11 Attacks trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 changed air travel, foreign policy and daily life in the United States, and they are now taught as history to students who were not yet born. Knowing what happened that morning, and what followed, is part of understanding the modern world. This quiz covers the day itself: the hijacked flights, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the passengers who fought back. It also covers the people who led the response, the findings of the 9/11 Commission, the laws and wars that came after, and the memorials built to honor the victims. It is written for high school students and classrooms, and for anyone who wants to test what they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the questions work as a study guide, a lesson review or a printable quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The September 11 attacks fell on which day of the week, the least-traveled day for American Airlines?
Tuesday
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.
Q 02George W. Bush was visiting a second-grade classroom in which state when the September 11 attacks began?
Florida
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.
Q 03After passengers fought back on September 11, Flight 93 crashed in a field near which Pennsylvania borough?
Shanksville
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.
Q 04Both planes that struck the World Trade Center on September 11 had taken off from which city's airport?
Boston
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.
Q 05Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were citizens of which country, also the birthplace of Osama bin Laden?
Saudi Arabia
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.
Q 06Which New York City mayor did Time name Person of the Year for 2001 after the September 11 attacks?
Rudy Giuliani
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.
Q 07Which small Canadian town sheltered nearly 7,000 stranded air travelers, inspiring the musical Come from Away?
Gander
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.
Q 08The September 11 boatlift off Manhattan moved more people than which 1940 evacuation, the Coast Guard's chief said?
Dunkirk
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.
Q 09All four planes hijacked on September 11 were long-haul flights, heavy with fuel, bound for which state?
California
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.
Q 10President George W. Bush addressed Ground Zero rescue workers through what, three days after September 11?
A bullhorn
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.
Q 11Which vice president took shelter in an emergency bunker beneath the White House during the September 11 attacks?
Dick Cheney
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.
Q 12Which US defense secretary was in his Pentagon office when Flight 77 struck the building on September 11?
Donald Rumsfeld
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.
Q 13Which US agency grounded every civilian flight over the country on September 11, diverting many to Canada?
Q 21Which former New Jersey governor chaired the 9/11 Commission, with Lee Hamilton as his vice chairman?
Thomas Kean
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.
Q 22Which former secretary of state was first named to chair the 9/11 Commission but resigned within weeks?
Henry Kissinger
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.
Q 23Of the four kinds of government failure listed in the 9/11 Commission Report, which was called the most important?
Federal Aviation Administration
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.
Q 14Which Egyptian-born ringleader of the September 11 hijackers was at the controls of Flight 11?
Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Atta had studied architecture at Cairo University before moving to Germany for graduate work. He was 33 on the day of the attacks.
Q 15Three of the four September 11 hijacker pilots had formed an al-Qaeda cell while students in which German city?
Hamburg
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.
Q 16Which regime ruling Afghanistan refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, prompting a US-led invasion in October 2001?
The Taliban
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.
Q 17In which country did US Navy SEALs kill Osama bin Laden in May 2011, in a raid on a walled compound?
Pakistan
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.
Q 18Which president ordered the May 2011 raid by US Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder?
Barack Obama
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.
Q 19Which alliance invoked its mutual defense clause, Article 5, for the first time after the September 11 attacks?
NATO
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.
Q 20Which British prime minister crossed the Atlantic to attend President Bush's September 20, 2001 address to Congress?
Tony Blair
Tony Blair attended to express his country's solidarity. The speech is widely seen as the announcement of the global war on terrorism.
Imagination
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.
Q 24The 9/11 Commission Report became a bestseller and, unusually for a government document, a finalist for which prize?
National Book Award
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.
Q 25Which adviser to President Bush at first declined to testify publicly to the 9/11 Commission, then did so under oath?
Condoleezza Rice
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.
Q 26Which former White House counterterrorism chief began his 9/11 Commission testimony by apologizing to victims' families?
Richard Clarke
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.
Q 27Whom did the 9/11 Commission Report call the principal architect of the attacks, captured in Rawalpindi in 2003?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
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.
Q 28Which cabinet department, created in response to September 11, was first led by former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge?
Homeland Security
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.
Q 29Which law, signed six weeks after September 11, expanded US government surveillance of suspected terrorists?
USA PATRIOT Act
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.
Q 30At which US naval base did a detention camp for al-Qaeda suspects open in January 2002, four months after September 11?
Guantanamo Bay
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.