September 11, 2001 is a date he will never forget. It was the day of the unbelievable and impressive terrorist attack at Twin Towers in New York with thousands of dead and wounded. A tragedy that changed the world and a signal that even the new century - the XXI - would not be all roses and flowers. "With the attack on the Twin Towers - an expert of the rank of Franco Gabrielli, former Chief of Police and now Undersecretary for Secret Services and Security of the Draghi Government, claimed in the Corriere della Sera in the days - everything has changed: the reality of terrorism and its perception, but also our daily life”. And it is nothing short of strange that the new Afghan government, made up of the Taliban, had initially decided, except for second thoughts, to take office precisely on a symbolic day like 11 September.
If the twentieth century had been that of two world wars, the tragedies of Nazism and fascism, the Holocaust and the dictatorship of authoritarian communism, the new century also immediately presented humanity with its bill. And 11/XNUMX was the day of the first of the three great crises we have known so far in this century, three crises one more dramatic than the other, three authentic black swans. After the attacks of 11 September, in 2008 came the unpredictable and unforeseen bankruptcy of the large American bank Lehman Brothers which gave way to the systemic financial crisis which later resulted in the economic recession. Finally, since the beginning of 2020, the Coronavirus crisis has exploded and has taken on unthinkable dimensions all over the planet - with over 160 million infections and over 4 million deaths - and which unfortunately is not over yet.
But let's go back to the Twin Towers event. What happened and how exactly did things go on 11/20 XNUMX years ago? That Tuesday morning (early afternoon in Italy) four airliners of the major US airlines (United Airlines and American Airlines) were hijacked by 19 terrorists belonging to al Qaeda. Two planes (American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175) crashed respectively into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse within 1 hour and 42 minutes, with the tragic images we all remember, of smoke, flames and people trying to save themselves by jumping from the windows. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was initially directed towards Washington but later crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania following a heroic passenger revolt.
The attacks caused the deaths of 2.977 people (plus 19 hijackers) and the wounding of more than 6.000, according to final figures released by the Washingont Post in 2003. Another 24 people are still listed among the missing. In addition to the civilian casualties there were also 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers and 55 military personnel who were killed in the attacks. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center. The very first crash, the one on the North Tower of the WTC, took place precisely at 8.46, while in Italy it was lunchtime, followed a few minutes after 9 by the one against the South Tower.
Since then, America and the West have recovered but September 11 remains a symbolic date that obliges us not to forget the victims and to keep our guard up because terrorism is always around the corner.
