Original taken from mgsupgs in History of the Twin Towers
Original taken from igornasa
to the World Trade Center - from foundation to Ground Zero
Story WTC (World Trade Center) started in 1946.
Go first post-war year- Europe lay in ruins, Japan was recovering from the consequences of the atomic bombing, China was in a premonition civil war. The only country that cost with little blood, with a mighty blow, the USA was very short time the world has become Pax Americana.
Pax americana et sovietica
Better to be dead than red(anti-communist slogan)
We will bury you
(N.S. Khrushchev)
The dollar was recognized as an international means of payment, the Marshall Plan began to be implemented, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank and, of course, the UN were created.
The UN headquarters is located in cosmopolitan New York.
In 1946, New York's city fathers, anticipating the rise of international trade in the postwar world, proposed building a "World Trade Center" in Lower Manhattan.
The idea turned out to be premature. Soviet Union, having the most powerful land army, acquired atomic bomb. The Soviets lowered the Iron Curtain over Europe, and in Asia, having become forever friends with China, they unleashed the Korean War.
world from Pax americana turned into Pax americana et sovietica (peace the American way and the world the Soviet way)
The Cold War did not really contribute to the flourishing of international trade - the Americans returned to the idea of building a World Trade Center only in the late fifties. The word “worldwide” now referred exclusively to the capitalist world.
The center was supposed to be built in Lower Manhattan, which was in deep crisis. After 1929, not a single new skyscraper was built here, and the area itself gradually turned into a ghost town. It was the Rockefeller brothers, David and Nelson, who stopped this process.
Rockefellers. "Baron", philanthropist, politician, banker
All large current conditions acquired in the most dishonest way"Capitalist Sharks. Biography of American Millionaires" ...
As a smart person, he will understand that the part is less than the whole, and will give me this part for fear of losing everything
(Golden Calf)
The brothers belonged to not the latest dynasty in the capitalist world - their grandfather was the same Robber Baron (robber baron) John Rockefeller Sr., who is Standard Oil and whose father is a philanthropist John Rockefeller Jr.(Rockefeller Center).
John Rockefeller Sr.
John Rockefeller Jr. and his sons - David, Nelson, Winthrop, Lawrence and John Rockefeller III, awaiting the arrival of the coffin containing the body of John Rockefeller Sr. (1937)
If the founder of the dynasty, the first “dollar” billionaire in the world, forever remained the mark of a robber baron, then his heirs became famous as philanthropists and political figures - money has no smell.
The most notable figures of the five brothers were Nelson and David.
Save Lower Manhattan!
The WTC skyscrapers were going to be called "Nelson" and "David"(New York folklore)
Nelson Rockefeller, vice president in the administration of Gerald Ford, served as governor of New York for 14 years.
David Rockefeller Since 1961, he has been president of Chase Manhattan Bank.
It was with the construction of the 60-story Chase Manhattan Bank skyscraper that the revival of Lower Manhattan as a business center began.
In 1960, the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, led by David Rockefeller, developed a plan to create World Trade Center- complex office buildings and hotels. With the support of New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the plan began to be implemented.
Such a grandiose project could only be completed Port Authority- a powerful organization responsible for the infrastructure inside a ring with a radius of 40 km and the center - the Statue of Liberty.
Through thorns - to the stars
The construction of the World Trade Center, of course, could not have happened without conflicts. The interests of two states (New York and New Jersey), the city of New York, the owners of the Empire State Building and the organization collided Port Authority. The parties had to compromise, make concessions and get change.Almost everyone was reconciled by the transfer of the World Trade Center site from the east coast of Manhattan (East River) to the west (Hudson). At the same time, they planned to build the World Trade Center just above the railway tunnels connecting Manhattan with the New Jersey coast.
1 - original location for the World Trade Center, 2 - World Trade Center
As a result, the state of New Jersey received modernization railway, and the State of New York and the Port Authority - profit from the operation of the terminal of this road, which was planned to be built under the World Trade Center.
The contradictions in the corridors of power were resolved; only the last battle took place on the square - with the owners of small shops located on the site of the future World Trade Center. These were mainly electronics stores - that's what the place was called Radio Row(Radio series).
Businessmen, behind whom loomed the owners of the Empire State Building, who did not want such a competitor to appear, staged demonstrations and tried to act through the courts.
All their efforts were in vain - on March 21, 1966, the first of the red brick Radio Row buildings was demolished.
What did they plan to build under such a loud name - the World Center?
Back in 1962, a little-known architect from Detroit, a 49-year-old American of Japanese descent, won a competition in which architects of the first rank participated Minoru Yamasaki.
Quiet Japanese-American
Biography of Minoru Yamasaki - classic illustration success the American way.
Born in Seattle to a family of Japanese immigrants (his father worked at a local shoe factory, and his mother was a pianist), he was early exposed to the racism that was then strongly developed in those places. To earn money for college, he traveled to Alaska, where he worked 14 hours a day on fishing boats.
Minoru Yamasaki shows the site of the World Trade Center on a model of Lower Manhattan
Two one hundred and ten
Yamasaki was given the modest task of designing a building with five times more office space than the Empire State Building. After going through dozens of options - a single skyscraper with 150 floors, four skyscrapers, a complex of low buildings and others, the architect settled on two identical parallelepiped skyscrapers with a square cross-section.
Italian influence is evident in the work of the Japanese-American architect.
The shape and location of skyscrapers are like those of medieval towers Italian city San Gimignano
Twin Towers of San Gimignano
Twin Towers of the World Trade Center
Gothic arches - like those of the Doge's Palace in Venice
Doge's Palace
World Trade Center Plaza
In the original version, the skyscrapers consisted of 80 floors, which made them shorter than the Empire State Building.
Guy Tozzoli, in charge of the project for the organization Port Authority, stated:
Yama, the President is going to put a man on the moon. I want our skyscrapers to be the tallest in the world
Yamasaki added 30 floors. Now, 110-story skyscrapers have surpassed the Empire State Building... and have begun the second high-rise race. As is known, first altitude race ended in 1931, and the winner, the Empire State Building, remained the world's tallest building for 40 years. The second race is still ongoing:
World Trade Center (1973)
Sears Tower (1974)
Petronas Towers (1998)
Taipei 101 (2004)
Shanghai World Financial Center (2008)
New WTC-1 (2013, under construction)
Burj Khalifa (2010)
On August 6, 1966, twenty years after the idea for the complex was born, construction of the World Trade Center began.
Construction of the century
We built and built and finally builtThe construction of a skyscraper is an extraordinary task in itself, but the construction of the World Trade Center was unprecedented in scale and difficulty.
The problems started from the foundation. The skyscraper must stand on bedrock(hard rock). It was more than 20 meters away in the place chosen for the Center. Simply digging was dangerous due to the proximity of ocean waters, so before digging began, an underground “wall” was built along the entire perimeter of the future construction site. The design was named bathtub (trough).
Bathtub (indicated by arrows). Tunnels: 1 - to New Jersey, 2 - from New Jersey
What was to be done with so much excavated earth? New York remembered its Dutch roots - the inhabitants of the Netherlands (Lower Lands) were famous for their ability to conquer space from the sea. Dutch colonists brought this know-how to New world, and the British took advantage of their knowledge - over the centuries of colonization, the outlines of Manhattan have changed greatly.
These changes are demonstrated by photographs from the 1930s - elevated metro line passes along the border New Amsterdam
1 - place under the World Trade Center, 2 - area of the future embankment
WTC towers and embankment under construction
Later, a residential complex was built on the embankment Battery Park City And World Financial Center. Four squat skyscrapers of the Financial Center, similar to Teletubbies, delight the eye with a variety of tops - egyptian pyramid, Mayan pyramid, dome and mastaba
The blue dots are the outline of Manhattan in the year of its “purchase” from the Indians (1626),
gray area - man-made areas.
Depths bathtub enough for seven underground floors, above which the construction of 110-story towers began.
Cranes imported from Australia were used during construction. Kangaroo, capable of self-expansion
The unusual design of the WTC skyscrapers is demonstrated by a unique photograph in which, like an X-ray, the “skeleton” of the North Tower is visible.
The weight of the skyscraper was carried by two groups of columns - central and external.
Stairs and elevators were located in the center, and the space between the central and outer columns was intended for offices. This design gave future tenants the freedom to redevelop the offices.
Typical skyscrapers of that time had facades entirely made of glass, while Gemini had windows in the back, behind the columns.
At night the windows were perfectly visible
during the day, skyscrapers became blind monoliths
This is what the skyscrapers looked like at the end of construction, in 1970.
The last floor of the North Tower was erected at the end of 1970, the South - in mid-1971. The opening of the Center took place April 4, 1973.
The legs of a huge tuning fork seemed like the Twins upon completion of construction.
The opportunity to see them in full height disappeared after the construction of the World Financial Center in 1988.
The cost of construction was 1.5 billion dollars, 7.5 thousand people built the World Trade Center, 8 people died.
Perpendicular City
As is customary, the United States is divided into areas that are assigned zip codes ( zipcode).
It is unusual to assign an index to an individual building. In New York City, 44 skyscrapers are large enough to have their own zip code. For example, the zip code for the Empire State Building is 10118 , Chrysler Building - 10174 , Seagram Building - 10152 .
The WTC index was the numbers 10048 .
The World Trade Center was a real city - in the buildings of the complex on a weekday there were up to 50 thousand workers and from 50 to 100 thousand visitors. This allowed it to be considered the sixth most populous “city” in New York State.
The World Trade Center is six buildings located on the Plaza (square) of 16 acres, and one building is outside the square.
1 WTC - North Tower
2 WTC - South Tower
3 WTC - Marriott Hotel
4 WTC - commodity and raw materials exchange
5 WTC - Dean Witter Building
6 WTC - US Customs
7 WTC - Salomon Brothers Bank
Often the entire complex was simply called the Twins - the rest of the buildings faded next to the 110-story towers:
The height of the North Tower (without antenna) is 417 meters
The height of the South Tower is 415 meters
Antenna height - 104 meters
The delivery of people and goods was carried out by elevators - there were 103 of them in each tower (97 passenger and 6 freight). Express elevators stopped only on the 44th, 78th and top floors (the so-called skylobbies- heavenly vestibules). For intermediate floors it was necessary to transfer to local elevators.
In the center of the Plaza there was a fountain with a rotating sphere
There was a mall under the plaza, and below the mall there was an underground garage with 2,000 spaces. At the seventh floor level there was a railway tunnel.
Endure - fall in love
The initial reaction of New Yorkers and guests of the capital of the world to Yamasaki’s creation was very cool:
The Twins are the boxes in which the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were delivered.
(New York folklore)
The most ruthless critics were the professionals:
Ada Huxtable
, architectural critic:
The towers are naked technology, the lobbies are maudlin sentimentality, the impact on New York is pure fantasy... The twenty-two inch (56 cm) windows are so narrow that one of the wonderful opportunities provided by high-rise buildings - a spectacular view from above - is completely absent. ... Towers are great buildings, but they are not great architecture.
Paul Goldberger
, architectural critic:
It [the Center] is big. It is larger than any building. He once again showed that a person can adapt to anything... His influence on the city, whether it concerns the skyline, the downtown environment and real estate prices, cannot be overestimated. But the Center's buildings themselves are so boring and banal that they would not be worth erecting even for a bank in Omaha.
Ultimately, the Twins repeated their fate Eiffel Tower- they got used to them, then they stopped noticing them, then they began to be proud of them.
Filmed against the backdrop of the World Trade Center:
Statue of Liberty
Church of St. Nicholas
If someone wanted to see Manhattan without the World Trade Center, they had to climb
to the upper floors of the Twins - the only place from which they could not be seen.
You could see “all of New York”
- from the windows of the Windows on the World restaurant, located on the 106th/107th floors of the North Tower
from the Observation Deck located on the 107th floor of the South Tower
from the platform on the roof of the South Tower (110th floor)
Soon, Gemini began to attract adventurers.
The French tightrope walker's "sky walk" became a sensation.
Philippe Petit's Big Show
When I see three oranges I must juggle, when I see two towers I must walk between them
(F.Petit)
At six o'clock in the evening on August 6, 1974, Philippe Petit, a self-taught tightrope walker, entered the roof of the South Tower. He was not alone - several people took part in the “conspiracy”. Pretending to be messengers, they carried the necessary equipment to the roofs of the towers - a steel rope, a collapsible pole, a bow and arrow. It took all night to transfer and secure the rope.
At seven in the morning, Philippe Petit stepped onto a shaky “bridge” stretched at a height of 415 meters, one inch (2.5 cm) wide and 40 meters long.
Far below, people hurrying to work stopped and looked in disbelief at the small human figure walking between the giant towers at an unimaginable height.
The first ten spectators were soon joined by thousands. A few minutes after the “performance” began, police arrived on the roof of the South Tower.
Sergeant Charles Daniels testifies:
When Officer Mayers and I went out onto the roof, we found this “dancer” halfway up the tower - to simply call him a tightrope walker would not be enough. When he saw us, he smiled and started dancing. When he knelt down, we retreated, worried that our presence would affect his concentration. We called everyone to silence. The tightrope walker lay down on the rope, then sat down with his legs dangling - it was incredible...
Getting up, he began to dance again, laughing and approaching us... When he approached the tower, we demanded that he step off the rope onto the roof, but he turned around and walked back... He began to jump, lifting his legs completely off the rope - we are all petrified...
Petit himself recalls:
In 45 minutes I made 8 transitions. During one of them, I lay down on the rope, looked up at the sky and saw a seagull above me. I could see her - she had red eyes. I remembered the myth of Prometheus. The bird circled in the sky and looked at the stranger who had invaded its space - who I was here, at this height...
When Petit returned to the roof, he was immediately arrested.
He was charged with many things: penetration into private territory, disobedience to the police, behavior that is dangerous to others, and even speaking in public without permission.
Of course, later all charges were dropped, Philippe Petit was only required to perform in front of a children's audience in Central Park.
Philippe Petit was followed by representatives of other genres.
Brave heroes of very short stature
They just don't notice usDue to the size difference
And that's why they forgive
Very small, but brave...
If Vladimir Mayakovsky's unemployed threw themselves from the Brooklyn Bridge, then one modern destitute chose the World Trade Center. Without intending to take his own life, he wanted to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed.
He landed safely, becoming one of the forerunners BASE jumping (Building, Antenna, Span, Earth)- an extreme activity in which daredevils parachute from buildings, antennas, bridges and cliffs.
The World Trade Center was conquered not only from above, but also from below.
George Willig, the “fly man,” climbed the South Tower on May 26, 1977, spending 3.5 hours on it. For violation public order he was fined $1.36 - a penny for every foot he covered.
Various plays were staged on the stage called the World Trade Center.
In 1995, the match for the title of world chess champion (according to the PCA) between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand took place here.
Hollywood could not neglect such a platform. In the 1976 remake of King Kong final scene takes place not on the Empire State Building, but on the roof of the World Trade Center.
The film, as we know, does not end with a happy ending for King Kong - mortally wounded, he falls from the roof of the South Tower onto the plaza of the complex.
First blood
That day, a bomb planted in a truck exploded on the second floor of an underground garage under the North Tower.
The players of Omar Abdel-Rahman (the Blind Sheikh) hoped that the North Tower would collapse on the South Tower, but the Twins held out.
6 people were killed and about a thousand were wounded. As a result of the explosion, the skyscrapers were de-energized, the elevators stopped working, and the warning system stopped working. Firefighters' portable radios were not functioning well, and the 911 system was overloaded.
The evacuation on foot using the stairs took more than 4 hours. A small group of people were taken by helicopters from the South Tower, and one person was even taken from the inaccessible roof of the North Tower.
Helipad on the roof of the North Tower; police helicopter
These operations gave people false confidence that helicopter rescues from rooftops were part of rescue plans.
The terrorist attack demonstrated the WTC's poor preparedness for such catastrophic events and forced action.
Alas, as the events of 2001 showed, these measures turned out to be half measures.
September 11
But the wind blew and you were no longer there,Who did you want to surprise...
The first ramming occurred at 8:46, the second tower collapsed at 10:28.
The World Trade Center, which took seven years to build and stood for thirty years, was destroyed in 102 minutes.
Completely destroyed
1 - 1 WTC
2 - 2 WTC
3 - 7 WTC
4 - North Bridge
5 - Church of St. Nicholas
Partially collapsed
6 - Marriott Hotel
7 - 4 WTC
8 - 5 WTC
9 - 6 WTC
Substantially damaged
10 - building at 30 West Broadway
11 - Verizon telephone company building
12 - 3 World Financial Center
13 - Winter Garden
14 - building at 90 West Street
15 - Bankers Trust building
Facade damaged
16 - One Liberty Plaza
17 - building at 22 Cortlandt Street
18 - Millenium Hilton Hotel
19 - Federal Office Building
20 - 2 World Financial Center
21 - 1 World Financial Center
The next day
When the ruins of the World Trade Center were removed, a virtually intact wall emerged from the ground bathtub
The place was named Ground Zero - this is how, since the times of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have called a point on the surface of the earth located directly under the center of an airborne nuclear explosion...
World Trade Center (1966-2001)
I was afraid to interfere. But some time passed, and this weekend we decided to check out the view from the new skyscraper.
I’ll tell you about this observation deck, how to get there, and what you can see from it...
Construction of the tower began to be planned in 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, when the previous twin towers were destroyed. But the architects and the city competed for a long time with different projects, and as a result the rack stood idle for many years. Construction began in earnest only in 2006. Then it was called the Freedom Tower. By the time it was completed last year, the patriotic fervor had waned, and it eventually received its current name, which simply duplicates its address: One World Trade Center.
It is quite difficult to look at the tower from below - your neck immediately begins to hurt. The building is 540 meters high and has 104 floors.
Right next door is a park where there is a memorial to the fallen twins and the people who died there. Behind the park stands a nearly completed transport hub designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect known for his futuristic buildings. Many of them resemble skeletons of fantastic animals.
In the early 2000s, Calatrava built the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia - one of my Top 10 places in the world. The construction of the WTC transport hub has already dragged on for 6 years longer than planned, and has cost twice as much as the original estimates (today the price is about $4 billion). ( .)
The memorial to the twins is very beautiful - it is made in the form of two fountains, which are gaping holes in the ground, exactly in the places where the towers stood until 2001. Water falls from the black stone walls, as if into an abyss. The names of people who died in the terrorist attack are carved on these stones.
The fountains are designed in such a way that standing next to them it is impossible to see their bottom.
Tickets to the observation deck currently cost $32 and are sold for a specific time. You can buy them in advance, via the Internet (), or at the entrance, standing in another line. The time on the ticket does not guarantee admission immediately - after your time is up, you will be allowed to stand in line outside.
And then another one inside. True, you can skip both of these lines by purchasing a VIP ticket for $54. Now that the rush has died down, these lines are not as long and move quickly, so decide whether you should spend the extra money to avoid the lines.
By the way, if you are a little late for the agreed time, the ticket can still be used. We bought at 3:15 and arrived around 3:40 without any issues.
At the entrance they check like at the airport - there is an X-ray for things, and a metal detector for visitors. There is even a machine in which you have to raise your arms up, but so far it has not been used. They force you to take everything out of your pockets - they take security seriously here.
A visit to the skyscraper begins with the elevator. They wrote about him a lot. Climbing one hundred floors takes less than a minute. At this time, the elevator shows passengers a mini-show about the history of New York on its wall monitors.
You can watch the elevator show
Once upstairs, you will be made to wait a few minutes, and then you will be taken into a small theater where they will show a mini-presentation. It seems like they decided to add a little interactivity to justify the high ticket price.
The performance consists of many pieces of New York life that are projected onto a relief wall. To accomplish this, in small theater It costs a ton of healthy projectors.
There's a mini surprise waiting for you at the end of this show, I won't spoil it.
We decided that we could do without him.
Right before the start of the beauty there are the next scammers of tourists. These offer to take a souvenir photo of you against the backdrop of skyscrapers. True, for some reason the skyscrapers are drawn on the big screen. Moreover, they use some special cameras, which, when you press a button, turn on for a second on all these monitors green color(to make it easier to photoshop later different types).
This photoshopography immediately reminded me of Chinese photographers who took similar pictures for tourists.
These various special offers for tourists occupy the entire one hundred and first floor. The main part of the observation deck is located on the hundredth - there the entire perimeter space is open to visitors and it is easier to enjoy the views. By the way, the design of the site, and indeed all the interiors of the new skyscraper, are not very impressive. Typical modern glass and steel, most of the walls are plain white and the ceilings are hung low, reminiscent of your average office. They could at least come up with something better for the observation deck.
I don’t know if this was on purpose, but the first view that greeted us was the Stout of Liberty. There are surprisingly many different boats floating around it - the water is lined with white traces.
Here's a view of the west side of Manhattan. There's a wide one on the right, not too wide tall building- this is my job. (You can read about it today from Varlamov)
Like any self-respecting skyscraper, there is a glass floor attraction.
But since there are no elements hanging over the abyss in this tower, the glass floor has to be simulated using LCD monitors. The effect is not at all the same, it turns out not scary. It’s a little awkward except to feel like you’re walking on TV with your feet.
On the main floor there are two stations like this, where city experts tell visitors stories about New York. While the narrator waves his hands, the picture on the screens changes in a circle. Then they invite visitors to point somewhere on the city map and tell them about this place.
At this height, the initially wide facades of the building converged into these narrow corner sections:
The view of the city is certainly stunning. For example, the financial district of lower Manhattan and Governor's Island.
Here are my favorite New York bridges. Next to the Brooklyn is the shamefully flat backside of Frank Gehry's apartment building. And the carousel in Dumbo is clearly visible, and "the ugliest building in New York"(Verizon concrete block).
There is a cafe-bar on the one hundred and first floor. If you're lucky, you can grab a table near the window, drink overly expensive drinks and enjoy the view...
The quality of service here is of course disgusting - we waited about twenty minutes for someone to come up and take our order. However, the impression was that the service corresponds to the quality of the food.
There is also a bar where you can use your mobile phone while at a great height.
But let's look through the windows again - this is what we came here for...
Here's a view of Midtown. I've been hanging around here triumphal arch, which is located in Washington Square Park. Will you find it?..
Or for example Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn. A rather boring sight, a bit like Sim City.
But these brown matchboxes in the center are Stu-town, a town of the same type of housing. I have a couple of friends living there. I wonder if they saw me when I took this photo?.. I waved at them just in case.
Very colorful roofs of houses. They are not visible from the street, and owners often do what they want with them. And they want a lot of things.
Unique perspectives open up from above. Here is an example of a view of the Calatrava transit hub:
Or here - one of the fountains of the Twin Towers Memorial.
After five o'clock in the afternoon the crowd noticeably increases - we were there on Friday, and people probably come here after work. It becomes difficult to photograph something without letting it into the frame extra people. And walk without getting into someone else’s frame.
Sometimes guards with a dog walk along the observation deck, and the dog tries to sniff out explosives from someone. Seeing the dog, I immediately felt very anxious - it serves as a reminder: “a terrorist attack could happen here.” But it quickly passed.
It's time to leave - the exit here, as always, is through the souvenir shop.
On the floor there is a very cool display of cute binoculars, but unfortunately they are not sold in the store, but rather a standard assortment of cups, T-shirts, pens and other similar crap.
When you find where the real exit is, it turns out that you have to stand in line to get into it. A VIP ticket will not help here; it only allows you to skip the entry lines.
Finally, look at another view of the southernmost tip of Manhattan:
While riding down in the elevator, its walls show another show. But it’s not as good as what’s playing on the way up, and in general, you don’t care about it anymore, because at this time your ears are stuffing up wildly...
In the United States, suicide bombers from the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda captured four passenger aircraft, pointing two of them at the symbol of business New York - the World Trade Center towers, and the other two - at the Pentagon and, presumably, at White House or the Capitol. All aircraft except the last one reached their targets. The fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
New York District Judge George Daniels issued a default judgment ordering Iran to pay $7.5 billion to relatives and other representatives of those killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The judge determined that Iranian authorities must pay another three billion to insurers who covered property damage and other material losses. Earlier, Judge Daniels ruled that Tehran could not prove its non-involvement in providing assistance to the organizers of the terrorist attack, and therefore the Iranian authorities bear a share of responsibility for the damage caused during it.
On the site of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2011, there was the World Trade Center Memorial. It consists of two square fountain pools located right at the bases of the former twin towers, along the inner walls of which streams of water cascade into square holes located at the bottom of each of the pools.
The names of 2,983 terrorist victims (including six who died in the 1993 World Trade Center attack) are carved into bronze slabs that line the parapets of both fountains.
Was open new complex World Trade Center. It is the fourth tallest skyscraper in the world - its height is 541 meters. Construction began in April 2006 on the corner of a plot of 65 thousand square meters, where the twin towers of the destroyed shopping center previously stood.
Celebrated in the United States as Patriot Day since 2009, after the approval of Act 111-13 of the US General Law, this date is also referred to as the national Day of Service and Remembrance.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
On September 11, 2013, the United States pays tribute to the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack, when suicide bombers on two hijacked planes attacked the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon building in Washington, the third plane, the crew and passengers of which tried to neutralize the terrorists, crashed in Pennsylvania.
According to official data, 2977 people died. More than half were never identified. It took 9 months to clear the rubble. So many bone and tissue fragments were found at the site of the terrorist attack that the number of bodies may be much higher than the official one. Relatives of the victims complained that the remains could have been taken along with the garbage to a landfill.
Photographer Gulnara Samoilova witnessed the terrorist attack and took unique photographs.
The first thing the woman did was throw herself on the ground behind the nearest parked car. “The dust was very prickly. Darkness fell. I began to choke, thinking that I was buried alive. Then an unfamiliar voice called out to me: “Are you okay?” Only then did I realize that I had survived,” the woman recalls. And then she immediately took out the camera again, reloaded the film, changed the lens and started shooting.
"The dust was very prickly. Darkness set in. I began to choke, thinking I was buried alive" - AP eyewitness
The site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on the morning of September 11, 2001 takes on new shape only 12 years after the tragedy, but a development project that includes five new skyscrapers, a 9/11 memorial and museum, a transport terminal and concert hall, still not completed. This is what it looks like now:
For the second year in a row, politicians did not make speeches at the ceremony. The roll call of the names of the dead and the minutes of silence marking the timing of the tragedy are preserved in the memorial ritual of New York. In the evening, two giant rays of light will rise over the city, representing the destroyed twin towers. They will be visible from 50 kilometers away.
Since 2002, September 11 has been celebrated in the United States as Patriot's Day, and since 2009, the day has also become a national day of service and remembrance.
On September 11, 2001, in the United States, suicide bombers from the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger planes - the World Trade Center towers, and two others - the Pentagon and, presumably, the White House or the Capitol. All aircraft except the last one reached their targets. The fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Victims of the September 11 attacks, including 343 firefighters and 60 police officers. Not only US citizens, but 92 other countries died. 2,753 people were killed in New York, 184 people were killed in the Pentagon, and 40 people crashed in Pennsylvania.
There are also 19 terrorists killed in the attacks, 15 of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were citizens of the United Kingdom. United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.
At 8:46 a.m. (hereinafter local time), an American Airlines Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) on Manhattan Island in New York between the 93rd and 99th floors. There were 81 passengers (including five terrorists) and 11 crew members on board the plane.
At 9:03 a.m., a United Airlines Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center between the 77th and 85th floors. There were 56 passengers and nine crew members on board the plane.
At 9:37 a.m., an American Airlines Boeing 757 flying from Washington to Los Angeles crashed into the Pentagon building. There were 58 passengers and six crew members on board the plane.
At 10:03 a.m., a United Airlines Boeing 757 flying from Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco crashed into a field in southwestern Pennsylvania, near the city of Shanksville, 200 kilometers from Washington. There were 37 passengers and seven crew members on board the plane.
As a result of a severe fire, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 9.59, and the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 10.28.
At 18.16, the 47-story building of the World Trade Center complex, located in close proximity to the World Trade Center towers, collapsed. A fire started in it.
The exact amount of damage caused by the September 11 terrorist attacks is unknown. In September 2006, US President George W. Bush reported that the damage from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was the lowest estimate for the United States.
On November 27, 2002, the United States established an independent commission to investigate the September 11 terrorist attacks (9/11 Commission). In 2004, she released the final report on the investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy. One of the main conclusions of the 600-page document was the recognition that the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks took advantage of the work of the US government and intelligence agencies.
The only person convicted in the case of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States is a French citizen of Moroccan origin, Zacarias Moussaoui. He was arrested in August 2001 after graduating from flight school in Oklahoma and training on a Boeing 747 simulator in Minnesota. In April 2005, Moussaoui was found guilty of intending to carry out a terrorist attack, which was supposed to be the fifth in a series of tragic events of September 11, 2001. On the personal instructions of Osama bin Laden, he was supposed to hijack a plane and go to ram the White House in Washington - this is what a terrorist talks about.
In May 2006, by a decision of the federal court in Alexandria (Virginia), where the trial took place, Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced.
Six other suspects in the attacks were arrested in 2002 and 2003 and spent several years in CIA prisons and, in 2006, at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In February 2008, the US Department of Defense was accused of murder and war crimes as part of the investigation into the September 11 attacks.
Charges were brought against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who, according to the 9/11 Commission report, is a central figure in the preparation of terrorist attacks in the United States; Yemeni-born Ramzi Binalshib (another spelling Ramzi bin al-Shiba), who provided organizational support to terrorists and transferred money to them; Mohammed al-Qahtani, who, according to investigators, on September 11, 2001 was supposed to become another, the 20th hijacker of four American planes; as well as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi (other spelling Mustafa Ahmad Khausawi) and Walid bin Attash.
Hearings in the case of those accused of involvement in organizing a terrorist attack.
In March 2016, New York District Judge George Daniels entered a default judgment requiring Iran to pay $7.5 billion to relatives and other representatives of those killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The judge determined that Iranian authorities must pay another three billion to insurers who covered property damage and other material losses. Earlier, Judge Daniels ruled that Tehran could not prove its non-involvement in providing assistance to the organizers of the terrorist attack, and therefore the Iranian authorities are liable for the damage caused during it.
In September 2016, the US Congress passed a law allowing the heirs of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, whose citizens were the majority of the terrorists who carried out the attacks. Already in early October 2016, an American woman who lost her husband during the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, filed her first lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. In March 2017, relatives of the victims in the United States. In April, it was reported that more than two dozen US insurers had filed claims against two Saudi Arabian banks and companies linked to Osama bin Laden's family, as well as several charities, for a total of at least $4.2 billion over the attacks. In August Saudi Arabia asked a Manhattan federal court to dismiss 25 lawsuits, arguing that the plaintiffs did not provide evidence that the kingdom or those associated with it charities were behind the attack.
At the site of the destroyed Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2011. It consists of two square fountain pools located right at the bases of the former twin towers, along the inner walls of which streams of water cascade into square holes located at the bottom of each of the pools. The names of 2,983 terrorist victims (including six who died in the 1993 World Trade Center attack) are carved into bronze slabs that line the parapets of both fountains.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources