What happened on the morning of September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists associated with al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, hijacked four commercial airplanes scheduled to fly from the East Coast to California. In a coordinated attack that turned the planes into weapons, the terrorists intentionally flew two of the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, a global business complex in New York City, causing the towers to collapse. They also flew a third plane into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, in Arlington, Virginia. Passengers and crew members on the fourth plane launched a counterattack, forcing the hijacker pilot—who was flying the airplane toward Washington, D.C.—to crash the plane into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, near the town of Shanksville.
The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people. This was the single largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil. The attacks caused the deaths of 441 first responders, the greatest loss of emergency responders on a single day in American history.
9/11 Memorial and Museum website
Click here to view an interactive timeline of events on the 9/11 Memorial & Museum website.
The 20th Anniversary
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 @911Memorial is offering libraries a free digital poster exhibition and resources, “September 11, 2001: The Day That Changed the World.” Learn more at https://911memorial.io/3ytYgnj
The Lincoln Library is grateful for the opportunity to share this exhibition with our patrons. We hope you will stop by to view the posters in our gallery, where they will be on display throughout the month of September. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum also offers a wealth of educational resources on their website here – please visit them to learn more about the history of September 11, 2001
Selected resources for deepening understanding of the events of that date or for learning about them for the first time:
Nonfiction
- The 9/11 Commission report: final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States
- The only plane in the sky: an oral history of 9/11/ Garrett M. Graff
- Fall and rise: the story of 9/11/ Mitchell Zuckoff
- September 11: an oral history [compiled by] Dean E. Murphy
- The looming tower: Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11/ Lawrence Wright
- Muslim Girl: a coming of age/ Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
Fiction
- Falling man: a novel/ Don DeLillo
- Extremely loud & incredibly close/ Jonathan Safran Foer
- The emperor’s children/ Claire Messud
- The submission/ Amy Waldman
Suggestions for younger readers from the Lincoln Public Library children’s librarians
- Nine, ten: a September 11 story/ Nora Raleigh Baskin
- Towers falling/ Jewell Parker Rhodes
- I survived the attacks of September 11, 2001/ by Lauren Tarshis, illustrated by Scott Dawson
- 14 cows for America/ Carmen Agra Deedy; in collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomazh; illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez
- The man who walked between the towers/ Mortdicai Gerstein
- All we have left/ Wendy Mills
Online Resources
- Library of Congress September 11, 2001 Documentary Project
- Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress
- StoryCorps September 11 Initiative
- The September 11 Digital Archive
- The National Archives 9/11 Commission Records
- The 9/11 Memorial & Museum
Streaming Video
