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11 Facts About 9/11

Nighttime view of the NYC skyline with the Tribute in Light twin beams shining upwards brightly from the 911 site.

Welcome to DoSomething.org, a global movement of millions of young people making positive change, online and off! The 11 facts you want are below, and the sources for the facts are at the very bottom of the page. After you learn something, Do Something! Find out how to take action here.

  1. On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed, 400 were police officers and firefighters, in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in NYC, at the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., and in a plane crash near Shanksville, PA.
  2. 9/11 was not the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. A bombing in February of 1993 killed six people.
  3. On any given workday, up to 50,000 employees worked in the WTC twin towers, and an additional 40,000 passed through the complex.
  4. After the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, the rescue and recovery clean-up of the 1.8 million tons of wreckage from the WTC site took 9 months.
  5. Passengers aboard United Flight 93, heard about the previous airplane attacks and attempted to retake control of the plane from hijackers. As a result, the hijackers deliberately crashed the plane in a Pennsylvania field instead of at their unknown target.
  6. While video accounts of the WTC attack aired immediately, no video footage of the Pentagon attack was publicly released until 2006.
  7. Though both the police and fire departments of New York City had their own emergency response procedures, the two departments did not have a coordinated response plan to a major incident.
  8. The attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 resulted in the largest loss of life by a foreign attack on American soil.
  9. 18 people were rescued alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center site.
  10. Cases of post-traumatic stress are common among 9/11 survivors and rescue workers. Respiratory problems, like asthma and lung inflammation, also developed at abnormal rates for those in and around the World Trade Center during and after the attacks.
  11. In 2019, the US Senate passed a bill ensuring that a fund to compensate victims of the September 11th attacks never runs out of money — and that first responders won't have to return to Congress to plead for more funding.
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