Impending Death is a photograph taken by freelance photographer Thomas Dallal during the September 11 attacks. [1] The photograph depicts the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, on fire after being struck by American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:46 a.m., and shortly before its collapse at 10:28 a.m. Visible in the photograph are numerous people trapped in the upper floors of the building, hanging out of windows because of the intense smoke and heat. They were unable to escape because all of the stairwells and elevators above the 91st floor were severed by Flight 11's impact. [2]
The photograph was later nominated for the Pictures of the Year International award, coming in second place. [3] A similar, closer photograph, taken at a different angle by Jeff Christensen of Reuters, was later used in an attempt to identify the victims depicted.
On September 11, 2001, four commercial aircraft were hijacked and deliberately crashed as part of a coordinated attack on the United States. Two, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m. respectively. Both towers collapsed in one hour and 42 minutes and 56 minutes respectively because of structural failure caused by the weakening of their support beams from the intense fire; the South Tower at 9:59 a.m., and the North Tower at 10:28 a.m.
Because of the angle at which Flight 11 impacted, nobody above the 91st floor of the North Tower was able to escape the building, trapping 1,344 people. All of them died due to smoke inhalation, jumping/falling from the building, or the eventual collapse of the tower. Numerous photographs were taken of victims as they fell from the building or were trapped inside of it. The Falling Man , taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew, has become one of the most famous and controversial images of September 11.
Impending Death was taken by freelance photojournalist Thomas Dallal, shortly before the collapse of the North Tower. Present in the image are roughly 50 people, located on the floors occupied by Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 employees in the attacks, or nearly two-thirds of its workforce, and Windows on the World, which lost 73 people.
In September 2006, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from the book Watching the World Change, detailing the efforts of family members of 9/11 victims to identify their relatives in the photograph and similar ones taken at other angles. [4]
American Airlines Flight 77 was a scheduled domestic transcontinental passenger flight from Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles. The Boeing 757-200 aircraft serving the flight was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, killing all 64 aboard and another 125 in the building.
United Airlines Flight 175 was a domestic passenger flight from Logan International Airport in Boston to Los Angeles International Airport in California that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The aircraft involved, a Boeing 767-200 carrying 51 passengers and 9 crew members, was deliberately crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone aboard and causing the deaths of more than 600 people in the South Tower's upper levels in addition to an unknown number of civilians and emergency personnel on floors beneath the impact zone. Flight 175 is the second-deadliest plane crash in aviation history, surpassed only by American Airlines Flight 11.
The original One World Trade Center was one of the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center complex in New York City. It was completed in 1972, stood at a height of 1,368 feet (417 m), and was the tallest building in the world until 1973, when surpassed by the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Marwan Yousef Mohamed Rashid Lekrab al-Shehhi was an Emirati terrorist hijacker from al-Qaeda who served as the hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 175, crashing the Boeing 767 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the September 11 attacks. He was one of five hijackers aboard the aircraft and one of two Emiratis to take part in the attacks, the other being Fayez Banihammad, who helped him hijack the same plane.
The September 11 attacks of 2001, in addition to being a unique act of terrorism, constituted a media event on a scale not seen since the advent of civilian global satellite links. Instant worldwide reaction and debate were made possible by round-the-clock television news organizations and by the internet. As a result, most of the events listed below were known by a large portion of the world's population as they occurred.
The World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, was destroyed on September 11, 2001, as a result of al-Qaeda's terror attacks. Two commercial airliners hijacked by terrorists were deliberately flown into the Twin Towers of the complex, resulting in a total progressive collapse that killed almost 3,000 people. It was the deadliest and costliest building collapse in history.
Windows on the World was a complex of dining, meeting, and entertainment venues on the top floors of the North Tower of the original World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States.
Mohand Muhammed Fayiz al-Shehri was a Saudi terrorist hijacker for al-Qaeda. He was one of five terrorist hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175 as part of the September 11 attacks. Despite his surname, he was not related to the brothers Wail al-Shehri or Waleed al-Shehri who were part of the team that hijacked American Airlines Flight 11.
The Falling Man is a photograph taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew of a man falling from the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks in New York City. The unidentified man in the image was trapped on the upper floors of the North Tower, and it is unclear whether he fell while searching for safety or jumped to escape the fire and smoke. The photograph was taken at 9:41:15 A.M.
Neil David Levin was an American businessman and political figure who was executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from April 2001 until his death during the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center later that year.
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the third into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. In response to the attacks, the United States waged the multi-decade global war on terror to eliminate hostile groups deemed terrorist organizations, as well as the foreign governments purported to support them.
Windows on the World is a novel written by Frédéric Beigbeder, and was first published in France in 2003, depicting the last moment of fictional victims in the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center’s North Tower on the morning of the September 11 attacks in 2001. An English translation of the novel by Frank Wynne was released on March 30, 2005 by Miramax Books.
9/11: The Twin Towers is a movie based on the 9/11 attacks which uses re-enactments and computer-generated imagery to re-create a minute-by-minute account of what happened inside the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City during the September 11 attacks. In the United States it premiered on the Discovery Channel on 3 September 2006, narrated by Harry Pritchett. In the United Kingdom it premiered on BBC One on 7 September 2006, narrated by Terence Stamp.
Dominick A. Pezzulo was an Italian American Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department (PAPD) officer who died in the September 11 attacks in lower Manhattan, New York City in 2001.
American Airlines Flight 11 was a domestic passenger flight that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing everyone still alive aboard the flight and resulting in the deaths of more than one thousand people in the top 18 stories of the skyscraper in addition to causing the demise of numerous others below the trapped floors, making it not only the deadliest of the four suicide attacks executed that morning in terms of both plane and ground fatalities, but also the single deadliest act of terrorism in human history and the deadliest plane crash of all time. The aircraft involved, a Boeing 767-200ER with 92 passengers and crew, was flying American Airlines' daily scheduled morning transcontinental service from Boston Logan International Airport in Massachusetts to Los Angeles International Airport in California.
Orio Joseph Palmer was a Battalion Chief of the New York City Fire Department who died while rescuing civilians trapped inside the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Palmer led the team of firefighters that reached the 78th floor of the South Tower, the floor where the plane had struck the building. As of 2024, his remains have never been identified.
The original Two World Trade Center was one of the Twin Towers in the original World Trade Center Complex in New York City. The Tower was completed and opened in 1973 at a height of 1,362 feet (415 m) to the roof, distinguishable from its twin, the North Tower, by the absence of a television antenna. On the 107th floor of this building was a popular tourist attraction called "Top of the World Trade Center Observatories," and on the roof was an outdoor observation deck accessible to the public and a disused helipad at the center. The address of this building was 2 World Trade Center, with the WTC complex having its own ZIP code of 10048.
The September 11 attacks were the deadliest terrorist attacks in human history, causing the deaths of 2,996 people, including 2,977 victims and 19 hijackers who committed murder–suicide. Thousands more were injured, and long-term health effects have arisen as a consequence of the attacks. New York City took the brunt of the death toll when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan were attacked, with an estimated 1,600 victims from the North Tower and around a thousand from the South Tower. Two hundred miles southwest in Arlington County, Virginia, another 125 were killed in the Pentagon. The remaining 265 fatalities included the ninety-two passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 11, the sixty-five aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the sixty-four aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and the forty-four aboard United Airlines Flight 93. The attack on the World Trade Center's North Tower alone made the September 11 attacks the deadliest act of terrorism in human history.
Francis Albert De Martini was an American architect employed by the Port Authority of New York, the agency that managed the World Trade Center. He was killed in the September 11 attacks when the North Tower collapsed.
Edna Troche Cintrón, also known as the Waving Woman, was a Marsh McLennan-employed administrative assistant at the World Trade Center who was killed in the September 11 attacks of 2001. She is well-known due to several videos of her waving in the impact site of American Airlines Flight 11 from just minutes after impact until shortly before the North Tower collapsed.