09/11/2026
NEVER FORGET 🇺🇸
Seventeen minutes. On September 11, 2001, that was the length of time from when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, at 8:46 a.m., to when United Airlines Flight 175 entered the right-hand side of millions of TV screens, at 9:03 a.m., and plowed into the South Tower at nearly 600 miles an hour.
For most Americans who can recall that morning, the attack didn’t begin at 8:46. The confusion did.
Many bystanders initially took the first plane crash to be an accident. Broadcasters speculated whether the collision was caused by a malfunction in a small plane, while the Port Authority assured those in the South Tower there was no need to evacuate.
In an essay for National Geographic, author and historian Garrett M. Graff argues that today, with some 40 percent of the country too young to remember the events of 9/11, the memory of that morning is at risk of being lost. In revisiting those surreal 17 minutes, he writes, “we can glimpse one America ending and a new one beginning.”
Learn more about the 17 minutes that changed America: https://on.natgeo.com/6rBgQa
