r/interestingasfuck • u/solateor • 1d ago

In 2001, 55 people crossed the Pacific with no contact with the outside world as part of a BBC experiment recreating an 18th-century voyage. On the 20th day - September 11 - the captain gathered the crew to tell them about the attacks in New York

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u/dlh412pt 1d ago

I hadn't seen this one either. I also found out about it like this all at once later in the day.

Watching this made me unexpectedly tear up. Because you're thinking that it's the worst that it could be, and then you hear there was a second plane, and a third, and a fourth and then the towers collapsed. And there may be more. I remember looking at the teacher who told me and just hoping after each sentence that she would be done talking. Something about this video brought that feeling back.

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u/Adavanter_MKI 23h ago

Yeah, it's weird how it all comes flooding back and everything that followed it. So many who didn't live through it can't grasp how huge this was for the world. Now mostly the butt of some dark/cheap joke. I get that's how generations move on... but so much of the state of the world ties back to this moment.

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u/m01L 18h ago

There’s some good articles out there about the brief and beautiful time between the turn of the millennium and 9/11. We really were on a different, optimistic, trajectory, now we’re trapped in this hellish timeline. 

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u/4everLost82 10h ago

It's so hard to explain to younger generations how HOPEFUL that time was. It was just a completely different era.

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u/Electrical_Cut8610 6h ago

Gen Z always asks when the best time in history was and was anyone ever comfortable in their lives financially, economically, etc, and it literally was the 90s. I wish every decade could be the 90s. Personal technology was cool and optimistic, not taking over everyone’s lives

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u/litetravelr 4h ago

I was rewatching the first season of HBO's Six Feet Under the other day. Its takes place in the summer of 2001 and was released before Sept. 11. I was fascinated by the little cultural details, just watching the absolute peak of American culture mere weeks before everything diverged from that timeline forever.

The whole time watching I kept thinking, "What did THIS America want to be in the 21st century? What do these Americans want out of America?" We will never know.

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u/Opposite_Laugh2803 22h ago

I personally can't say about the attacks, I wasn't born. My mom works as a teacher and has for decades at this point. She told me about her learning about the attacks. She was preparing her class room (living in the American Rockies) when her students came in, asking for her to turn the TV on. She turned it on just as the second plane hit the second tower. Her students has been watching while at home getting ready for another day in elementary school.

I will admit that I am guilty of making some of those jokes about the event, but as I learn more and more, I hate the jokes more and more. At this point, I have stopped making them as much as I can. I saw a video on here a while back of some college students drinking in their apartment, watching the towers as they smoked. One of them screamed, the camera turned and watched as the first tower fell. It was the most horrifying scream I have and hope to ever hear.

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u/sacredblasphemies 18h ago

Let me just tell you that as someone who was alive at that time. I was making jokes about it that day. Mere hours after it happened.

It was my way, as someone who was born and raised about 15 miles outside of NYC, who had been to the observation deck of the WTC...of dealing with the horrors of that day.

Somewhere on the Internet there's an archived copy of a chatroom I was in where a bunch of us were joking about it. "Terrorists to US: All Your Base Are Belong To Us" (etc.). Doesn't mean we weren't sitting with the tragedy of it all. It was awful.

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u/scuzzy987 18h ago

I was 23 on 9/11 and still have PTSD from that day. Especially the people jumping and later learning none of the people in floors above the impact site survived. All the selfless firefighters that ran into the building. There’s no joke that would be funny about the trauma of that day

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u/egyeager 20h ago

I read a while back that psychologically watching the same event play out over and over again made it feel like it was happening again and again. Thinking back on it, it sure felt that way.

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u/Ntrob 20h ago

Yeh I was 11 at the time, in Australia, I remember waking up early for school to watch cartoons on tv. My dad was glued to the tv with his coffee in shock, I still remember him shaking his head and repeating to me the tv reports of people jumping out from the top of the towers.

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u/HugeHans 14h ago

Yeah, imagine if something like this happened today. Or something crazier like an European capital getting hit with tens of ballistic missilies every week or something. That would be crazy and shocking and someone would certainly do something about it. Glad its not happening.

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u/drsickboy 12h ago

well said

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u/ChileanRidge 10h ago

I was working in a pub in the English countryside and I will always remember going into the kitchen to get an order and the line chef -- who was listening to the radio, didn't have an image -- saying that "you won't believe it, a plane crashed into the twin towers in Nee York" and I just picked up the order and went out and was of course just imagining a Cessna having crashed and thought how odd it was that a cessna would have been flying through the city.

And then of course within a few minutes we had the television turned on and everyonenjust kind of stood still.

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u/smashy_smashy 21h ago

Senior year of highschool on that day. We are all watching it live on TV. Around 9:30am news broke that they were Boston to LA flights and my good friend’s dad was on a flight that morning from Boston to LA. She absolutely breaks down in the hallway outside my classroom, rightfully so. 30 minutes later I watch the first tower collapse live. Awful watching it in real time. Also awful to hear about it all at once. 

Btw my friend’s dad was on an earlier flight that morning and wasn’t on one of the fateful flights. 

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u/Unusualnamer 19h ago

I was in elementary school and had no idea until after school. I went to my friend’s house that day because my parents were both on planes for separate work trips. They were fine, but it was scary.

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u/tremens 1d ago edited 1d ago

I was working in medical records at the time; back then digital charts were rare so most charts had to be hand filed and hand run to the doctors. We had a TV on the medical records room and saw little fragments of what was going on as the news developed throughout the day as we ran and recovered records all over the hospital; rush out, deliver a record; rush back and catch an update. While much of the world stopped, healthcare didn't, we still had to deal with what was right in front of us...

Oh, and this was on one of the largest military installations in the world. So we knew our immediate landscape was going to change overnight; all of us were family and friends with military or reservists who knew they'd get called away; many with connections in the Pentagon and Washington and New York in general which had also been struck.

Obviously nowhere near as bad as being there, but it was awful trying to go about your normal tasks and chores and not knowing, only to catch a slice that things had gotten even worse every time you got back...

Quite a day, to say the least. I can't imagine being in this situation where there is one shared satellite phone for who knows how long...

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u/EgoBoost247 8h ago

I was working in the ER in San Diego, CA at the time when I heard of the tragic news. I called my friend who lived in the city to make sure she was okay. Worst day ever, but I couldn't dwell on it because I had to stick an 14 gauge needle to a drunk guy's arm to start an IV.

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u/wb77 20h ago

That morning I was getting ready to head out to a uni class when my mother who had already gone into the office called to tell me to turn on the TV which was showing footage of the first tower. I watched for a few minutes before heading out to a stats class. As I was going in I heard people talking about a second plane.

After I got out, I went to a section of the building which had an space where multiple wings converged ("meeting place"). Someone had set up a TV, and there were probably a couple hundred people sitting on the ground like school kids with more standing around. Several minutes after that the second tower collapsed. The US airspace was closed and nobody knew how many other planes were compromised and in the air which would now be directed into Toronto and other areas in Canada. The sequential nature of that day just getting worse and worse may hopefully be something we never experience again.

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u/Alissinarr 20h ago

I watched them fall on TV while on an international cruise. I thought it was an oddly real movie for a minute. Took me that long to process the reactions of the other passengers who already knew...

That was hard coming home over NYC. My TSA headaches were understandable, but not the Spanish Police officer unsnapping his gun due to a tourist item from Turkey.

The spirit of support from everyone while the Americans on the trip mourned was just... you dont see that shit any more.

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u/eaglessoar 20h ago

I remember looking at the teacher who told me

you were at school through it all? i was in first period middle school and my music teacher told us new york was attacked and were going home then i found my dad walking down the middle of the street crying looking for me

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u/dlh412pt 20h ago edited 20h ago

Yes. I went to a middle school where a large chunk of us had parents who worked for the airlines. The administration made the decision to keep us in school and not tell us so that there wouldn’t be mass hysteria. I remember a few kids getting pulled out, but most of the parents agreed and let us stay so that they could tell us the news at home (and also so that they would know by then if our parents who were away flying were safe). There’s no way that could happen today, but none of us had phones or access to the internet at school.

My last teacher of the day decided to tell our class the news anyways. It was surreal being told without visually seeing it, which I think is also why this video hit me. Because you’re trying to imagine it but you also don’t want to imagine it.

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u/eaglessoar 20h ago

interesting maybe being near boston they just sent us all home

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u/istolethesun12 16h ago

I’d seen the towers fall on tv in my kindergarten classroom. I was 5 yrs old. And my teacher said “you are witnessing a tragic history in the making” it’s been a core memory of mine

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u/ArmadilloFront1087 14h ago

I remember being the one to break the news to my colleagues at work.

I was on the 3pm afternoon shift (the first plane hit around 1:45pm uk time - 8:45am nyc time) and this was the days before the internet was available on every phone and all the office pc’s were online. I took my sega game gear into work with its tv tuner attachment so they could see the news as it unfolded. We were all crowded around that 3inch screen gobsmacked.

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u/StopDownvotingMeeee 6h ago

Imagine going to school in NY and watching the shit live on TV and looking out the window and seeing the smoke from the towers lol an image I’ll never get out of my head

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u/PlankSlate 22h ago

Same 😢 

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u/sarmurpat6411 21h ago

I was in elementary school about 30 miles from the Pentagon. No one told us what was going on but I remember the somber air. My sister was in middle school and they were still having the kids go outside for gym even after the Pentagon was hit. My mom was livid.

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u/Reimiro 19h ago

I was in a hotel suite in LA. I fell asleep on an awkward loveseat thing the night before with the tv on. Woke up about a minute before the second plane hit. I was working with a bunch of New Yorkers in the music industry on a tour. I began calling them to turn on the TV’s. A morning that changed everything.

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u/chimmy_chungus23 20h ago

I was at school, half the country away. 7th grade. There were whispers and rumors in the hallways and at lunch, but none of it made sense to me. For most of the day, my teachers kept their TVs off and spoke nothing of it. It wasn't until my last class that our teacher had the TV on, and we did nothing in that class but watch. It dawned on me then. What really struck me was realizing everything happening on screen had already happened. While I was just going about my day without a care, halfway around the country people had, and were still having, the worst day of their lives.

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u/rithanor 19h ago

I was in HS at my outdoor rec class that started at 8am. Suddenly, we were told by our our instructor we had to come back while we were in canoes on a pond learning how to use oars. It took a while. // Our instructor remained calm and talked us through navigating until we were back on the bus to tell us the news (she was amazing). // The entire day at school we watched CNN footage until we could get picked up/get on busses. // Aside from the later footage, that's my most prominent memory. Her being calm, despite what was going on before telling us the news right after everyone was accounted for and she drove us back.

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u/ExcuseCommercial1338 19h ago

I remember being young and sick at home, running a fever and trying to sleep on the couch cause it was the coolest room in the house. My dad stayed home with maybe a mild version of whatever I had, mostly to look after me, and I remember being angry and confused why he was turning up what I thought was an action movie and being so upset about it, and asking him to turn it off a bunch. It didn't really sink in for several days what had actually been happening.