Today is the 25th anniversary of 9/11 do you remember what you were doing when you saw the news?

[Shmoigel]

I remember every single bit of that day like it was yesterday. I had only visited the WTC 3 months earlier too. Thinking about the families and survivors and emergency workers today.

I had just started upper 6th. Came back from choir practise to my common room to find all the girls stood inches away from the TV. I think the 2nd plane had just hit. Everyone was silent, couldn't take it in.

Then we had to go off to afternoon lessons. Most of the classes just dragged the TVs in and watched, but I was the only one in my German class so we didn't get a TV (had to discuss it all auf Deutsch) and by the time lessons were over the towers had collapsed and the pentagon had been hit. I wrote a very dramatic entry in my angsty teenage diary that night about it being a "day that will go down in history," which wasn't actually an exaggeration!

The next morning in school chapel (we had a short chapel service most mornings instead of Assembly) everyone was still shocked. One of the teachers had been a schoolboy in South Wales when the Aberfan disaster happened, and he gave a talk about how these events impact us. Then we sang (I think) Abide With Me and I Vow to Thee, My Country. Incredibly moving.

I had a small baby & lived rurally no TV no Internet. . Very unusually I was in the middle of a big city for an interview. As I was leaving I went through reception which had a big TV screen. Timing: I saw the 2nd plane hit 'live'. About 40 people just stood stock still and utter silence. RIP all those who died & suffered that day. It changed the world forever.

I had been at college, came home around 4ish. My mum had the news on. The part I remember most was seeing the people at the windows waving for help/trying to get air, then the first tower fell and I remember thinking about all those poor people. It was horrifying. The fact that thousands of people went about their day and never came home or lost loved ones.

To me it felt like a huge horrific turning point in history. I think a lot about what happened after in terms of war and so much violence that continues to happen as an indirect fallout

I also get really pissed off at conspiracy theorists who say it was planned by the government as an excuse to go to war, that the buildings were demolished with secret detonators, that there were no planes. I think it is an insult to the people that died.

Mostly I think about how in the last moments there was so much love and heroism from the people that were about to die, towards their families, colleagues and fellow human beings, and the selflessness of the first responders. I try to focus on that instead of the hate that caused it.

I had been in an all day conference. Got on the (fairly empty) tube early evening and someone had left a copy of the Evening Standard on a seat. For a few moments I couldn't fathom what the picture on the cover was showing. It didn't make any sense.

I was at home with toddler DC and DH had the day off work. His work colleague rang him and said to turn on the television. The first tower had already been struck and to start with, everyone was assuming it was a terrible accident.

Then on live tv we watched the second aircraft hit, and realised the awful truth that it was deliberate.

Not something you can ever forget.

Yes, it was a wall upon wall of it happening. It was awful. I remember whatever was on there was a news flash about the first tower. They were showing it live and then we all saw the second tower get hit. It was horrible. We wanted to turn the TVs off but loads of people were coming in and asking what had happened and wanted the news on.

It was on over and over, all day.

I have never wanted to slap someone so much. I couldn’t even speak to her.

I'd been in the college common room when the first plane hit and heard a vague mention on the radio of something happening in New York. Didn't think anymore of it and toddled off to afternoon lectures.

Went into town afterwards with my mum to buy a birthday present and can still remember vividly getting home, walking past the living room window and the sight of my dad stood stock still in the middle of the room staring at the telly. Remember walking in and listening to Kirsty Young interviewing her husband live on air (he was in NY) and hearing the fear in her voice as she tried to stay calm and professional.

I was at home with a 2 year old. Heard the news on the radio so put the TV on. I was watching live when the second plane hit. I had to leave shortly after to do the school pick up for my older two. I remember having to tear myself away and get on with my day. We were all standing outside the school gates talking about it, with a surreal sense of intense foreboding, confusion and utter disbelief.

We were on holiday and had been out for the day. Got back to the holiday cottage. I did something with DD in her room and then went into living room . DH said I had to watch the TV. I looked and said I’m not a fan of disaster movies and he said it was real.

It was one of those times where your brain takes time to fully comprehend what has happened as the reality of it is so awful.

We were in Florida at the time on holiday. I was 18. I can remember getting back to the hotel room just at the time the second plane hit.

We ended up in Florida for an extra week or so with all flights being downed - a lovely American man at our hotel offered to put our entire family up in his ranch free of charge if we had been struggling with any hotel costs if we had been there any longer.

I can remember the first evening after it happened we had to find somewhere for dinner. So quiet and subdued everywhere.

I was cleaning, had my yellow marigolds on and listening to the radio and realised something big was happening. Turned the tv on and sat, utterly transfixed as the 2nd plane hit. My brain just couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. It was like the end of the world.
It will be seared on my memory forever

Very similar to me. I was a uni student and was doing a day shift in a pub. Teeny tiny TV on the wall and one regular sat at the bar smoking a cigar (). Watched it all unfold with a youthful naivety initially - and then realised quite quickly the world was going to be a very different place.

I was at work in London and vividly remember a colleague saying a small plane had crashed into WTC ‘but only 6 people had died’, and immediately had a really bad feeling about it.

An enduring memory is my commute the following day and every single person on the train had a newspaper and the images were so shocking and there was a palpitable sense of disbelief and collective sadness in the air that 25 yrs later I have thankfully never experienced again.

I had already booked a trip to NYC that October, 6 wks later. We still went but didn’t go to ground zero. It still felt too raw and sad and disrespectful to go and gawp at the amazing workers who were essentially still in the middle of a rescue mission to recover missing people. I thought the people of NY were amazing.

On the bus home from school, in London. Got a phone call from my dad telling me to go straight home, no sports practice. And tell my friends to do the same. We were very confused why a terrorist attack in New York would affect us.. sadly, we were used to a bit of disruption from IRA attacks.

Its strange. My DD is the exact age I was then. Shes probably had a lot safer childhood than I did, but the knowledge if attacks is a lot more prevalent.

My DC was two. I heard the news in the car on the way to the supermarket. We turned around and went home to watch TV.

I still can't look at photographs I took from my Jersey City kitchen window between 1980-85. The Twin Towers stood front and center.

I was working in a mundane boring job. I was sorting the outgoing mail into appropriate piles of 1st class, 2nd class etc.

One of my colleagues from the office next door burst into the room and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre.

We basically hovered round one persons desk looking at the live news feed online - early days for the internet though.

That was until the crabbit old spinster boss went a bit mad at us for "skiving"....

I don’t agree with this. Unfortunately the whole world could see the horror on televisions. Some people managed to say goodbye to family, some landline but others mobile.

Not quite mobile but distance are the calls from Flight 93 leading to the heroism that likely saved further lives when the passengers and crew managed to bring the down the plane short of the target.

RIP the victims and best wishes to family still trying to get answers and get accountability.

I was at high school, in my history class and someone came in and told the teacher, he turned the old wheelie style tv on and we just sat for the rest of the day watching it.

I don't think another lesson was done that day, every class we went too was just watching the horror on the tv

I was living abroad and saw it on the news and discovered later very shockingly and sadly that one of my former colleagues had died in the North Tower. I didn’t even know that they had moved to NY three months previously. They were 30 years old. They had so much life yet to live. RIP.

I worked in a big building which did have some CCTV and therefore some screens not showing the usual TV programmes. A man came out of one of the small rooms to say that an aeroplane had flown into the WTC. It was mid-afternoon (?) in the UK. While we were taking that in he came out again to say another one had. One of the TV monitors was allowed to be put on to a normal TV programme and some people, not all, gathered to look at it.

It was supposed to be a happy and exciting day for me. I'd been to Royal London Hospital for a 12-week scan that confirmed I had my first viable pregnancy (I was 36). I then took the tube to work in central London, later than usual because of the appointment.
I arrived at the ad agency with my baby scan photo in hand, all ready to announce my news ... but the usually busy offices were quiet and deserted. I saw the studio manager in the lift. He said something about a plane had crashed into the twin towers in New York. But the news didn't land in my head. I showed him the scan pic. I was confused and didn't know what it all meant.
I went to my desk and tried to load the BBC news site, but it was overloaded. I was still holding the baby scan picture, hoping to show it to friends and colleagues.
I went down the floor where we had a big TV suite, and that's where everyone was. They were crying and sobbing. The second plane hit. It was like a horrible dream.
At that moment I didn't want to be pregnant. Didn't want to bring a baby into this unsafe world.
The joy of having a baby just ... went.
So many people dead. And me thinking why am I having this baby.
It's a day of mixed emotions I will remember forever.

Came in from school and watched the news!

Yes I do but it took several hours to really sink in the enormity of it. It was just incomprehensible. I would say that is one of the defining world events in my lifetime along with COVID. I know that wars and natural disasters occur all the time across the world but these were the ones that I felt the impact of, that 'affected' me in the emotional sense .

I was living and working in Bermuda and shared a house with an American & a Canadian. I was off that day and my job was to go into Hamilton and book flights for the 3 of us to go to New York for the weekend. I was about to leave & the house phone rang and it was the girl from New York she said turn the TV on - I did and said "what's this a film?" I was only aware of the spinning restaurant in a sky scraper as my big sister had been there and didnt realise the significance of the WTC.

I worked in a 5* Hotel and was called into work as all our American guests were trying to get updates from loved ones & as Bermuda is a short flight from NYC a lot were very concerned. I remember having to write updates on a whiteboard in reception whilst guests stood around me crying. I later lost my job as we lost SO much business.

Yes, I remember the whole day. I was 29 and my SIL and BIL both worked in New York. Thankfully, SIL was at their home in Connecticut and BIL was working a different city that day.

I really thought WWIII would start but I got home to my phone ringing. It was my dad and I will never forget his reassuring words, that I did not ask for, but that he obviously instinctively knew that I needed to hear.