November 3, 2014: The New World Trade Center Opens

November 3, 2014: One World Trade Center opens in Lower Manhattan, the replacement for the "Twin Towers," One and Two World Trade Center, that had stood from 1973 until their destruction by terrorists in 2001.

It was inevitable that the Towers would be replaced by something. Plans ranged from exact duplicates to, partly in jest, a series of five towers of varying heights, with the tallest in the middle, so that it looked like both a clenched fist and a raised middle finger. Eventually, a design was chosen with a main tower and three smaller (but still very tall) ones.

The new building's architect was David Childs, born in 1941 in Princeton, New Jersey, although he graduated not from Princeton University but another Ivy League school, Yale University. He had previously designed One Worldwide Plaza, on the site of the old Madison Square Garden; the redesign of the James A. Farley Post Office Building into the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station; the National Geographic Society's headquarters in Washington, D.C.; and the American Embassy it Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Perhaps most interestingly, given this project, he had designed a "twin towers": The Time Warner Center (now the Deutsche Bank Center), on the site of the New York Coliseum on Columbus Circle.

Childs was with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the world's great architectural firms, which has designed 2 buildings that have held the title of tallest building in the world: The Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago, and the current titleholder, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Due to various delays, construction on its replacement could not begin until on April 27, 2006. On April 30, 2012, it surpassed the height of the Empire State Building, reclaiming for the World Trade Center name the title of tallest structure in New York City. On May 10, 2013, the structure was topped off by the completion of its spire, giving it the height of 1,776 feet, matching the year of the Declaration of Independence.

The building opened for business on November 3, 2014. The Observatory opened on May 29, 2015. Officially, it has 94 stories, compared with its predecessor's 110. But the top floor is labeled the 104th, and it is 1,268 feet above the ground. The roof is 1,368 feet, matching the height of the previous One World Trade Center. (The old 2 World Trade Center was slightly shorter, at 1,362 feet.)

The mailing address is 285 Fulton Street. Fulton is to the south, and it is also bordered by West Street on the west, Vesey Street on the north, and West Broadway on the east. Compare this to the Twin Towers, whose footprints are now part of the 9/11 Memorial: Fulton on the north, West Broadway on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street on the west.

Construction of a new Two World Trade Center has begun, on the site of the former 5 World Trade Center. It will rise to 1,345 feet, but the COVID epidemic stopped construction. It will not resume until tenants start applying. An opening of 2025 currently seems like a good guess.

The new 3 World Trade Center opened on June 11, 2018, and is 1,079 feet high. The new 4 World Trade Center opened on November 13, 2013, and is 978 feet high. Construction of the new 5 World Trade Center is set to begin in 2023, for a 2028 opening, and is currently planned to be 900 feet high. And the new 7 World Trade Center opened on the site of the original on May 23, 2006, the first part of the new complex to open, and is 743 feet high.

There are no current plans to build a new building with the name 6 World Trade Center. The old one was damaged badly enough that it had to be torn down, and the new One World Trade Center was built on the site.

UPDATE: As of November 3, 2024, the new 2 WTC has only the foundation built, and there is no timetable for construction to resume. 5 WTC is now set to be completed in 2029. There is still no plan for a new 6 WTC.

*

November 3, 2014 was a Monday. The baseball season had ended 5 days earlier, when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, beating the Kansas City Royals in Game 7, 3-2. On ESPN Monday Night Football, the Indianapolis Colts beat the New York Giants, 40-24, at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, just 11 miles from the World Trade Center complex.

There were 6 NBA games played that night:

* The Brooklyn Nets beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, 116-85 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, only 3 1/2 miles from the World Trade Center complex.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 104-93 at the Wells Fargo Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia. James Harden scored 35 points for the Rockets.

* The Memphis Grizzlies beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 93-81 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Boston Celtics, 118-113 at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas. Jeff Green scored 35 points in a losing effort for the Celtics.

* The Sacramento Kings beat the Denver Nuggets, 110-105 at the Pepsi Center (now the Ball Arena) in Denver.

* And the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Utah Jazz, 107-101 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.

There was only 1 NHL game played that night, and it was at Madison Square Garden, just 3 miles from the World Trade Center complex. The New York Rangers lost to the St. Louis Blues, 4-3 in a shootout.

September 11, 2001: The World Trade Center Is Destroyed and the Pentagon Is Attacked

 

September 11, 2001: I woke up that warm, sunny Tuesday morning, unemployed and with no reason to get up early, and, as was always the case at the time, the first thing I did was turn on the radio. It was after 10:30, so it had already all happened. And the announcer -- a woman whose name I never learned -- on WCBS, 880 on the AM dial, said, "The World Trade Center is gone."

What? What do you mean, "gone"? The World Trade Center is gone? A pair of 110-story skyscrapers -- actually, a seven-building complex -- doesn't just disappear. Gone? What, did aliens come along and beam it up, like on Star Trek?

If it had, there would still, theoretically, have been a chance to get it back. But, no, that was not the case.

Did I hear it right? I had just gotten up. I was still half-asleep. Maybe I misunderstood. I went to the TV, turned it on, and... nothing. Of course. Every station had its transmitter on 1 World Trade Center. Except one, WCBS, Channel 2. Theirs was, and remains, at the Empire State Building. If you didn't have cable TV, then they were the only ones broadcasting. And all that was left of the World Trade Center was a cloud of black smoke.

The planes:

* American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767, with 92 people on board, took off from Logan International Airport in Boston at 7:59 AM, meant for Los Angeles International Airport, and hit 1 World Trade Center, the North Tower, between the 93rd and 99th floors, at 8:46.

* United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767, with 65 people on board, took off from Logan at 8:14, also meant for Los Angeles, and hit 2 World Trade Center, the South Tower, between the 77th and 85th floors, at 9:03.

* American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, with 58 people on board, took off from Dulles International Airport in Loudoun County, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., at 8:20, also meant for Los Angeles, was turned back toward Washington, and hit the west wall of the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, also across the Potomac River from Washington, in Arlington, at 9:37. Victims: 184.

* And United Airlines Flight 93, another Boeing 757, with 44 people on board, took off from Newark International Airport in New Jersey at 8:42, meant for San Francisco International Airport. The passengers, having heard on their cell phones about the other planes, decided to fight back, and stopped the hijackers from reaching their target, which U.S. intelligence later decided was the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington. Instead, at 10:03, the plane crashed into a field in rural Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, usually identified by its mailing address of Shanksville, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, and 130 miles northwest of Washington.

The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 AM. In 2003, in commemoration of the magazine's 50th Anniversary, TV Guide listed "South Tower Falls" as the most memorable televised moment ever, topping the 1st manned Moon landing in 1969. The North Tower followed at 10:29 -- mere seconds before I woke up.

There's an overpass about a mile from where I was living at the time, where State Route 18 goes over the New Jersey Turnpike. It's next to the Tower Center complex, the 23-story "minor league twin towers," as I called them, where the bus takes me into Manhattan. From that overpass, on a clear day, you could see the World Trade Center. On 9/11/01, all you could see was a plume of black smoke, going back seemingly forever.

Three days later, I stood on that overpass again, and it was a plume of white smoke. No, it didn't mean there was a new Pope, or that the Towers would be back.

My father worked at the World Trade Center, as an engineering consultant for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the complex's operator, for six months, before he decided that the commute was too long, and he quit. That was two years before the attack. It was a week before he found out that everyone he worked with got out all right.

Not so lucky were, depending whose figures you believe, and whether you count people who got sick from working the rescue and salvage jobs afterward, about 2,750 people. Eight of them were from my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. As far as I know, I never met any of them.

East Brunswick's memorial

There were 1,747 who, at the time, were living in the State of New York. Of those, 1,147 lived in New York City. There were 694 from New Jersey, including 3 from my parents' hometown of Newark, and 3 from next-door Bloomfield, where they lived when I was born.

There were 92 from Massachusetts, 81 from Virginia, 65 from Connecticut, 50 from Maryland, 49 from California, 30 from Pennsylvania, 11 from the District of Columbia, 10 from New Hampshire, 9 from Illinois, 6 from Texas; 5 each from Florida and Rhode Island; 4 each from Alabama, Georgia and Maine; 3 each from Louisiana, North Carolina and Ohio; 2 each from Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Oklahoma; and 1 each from Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

There were 13 from Britain, 6 from Germany, 5 from Canada, 3 from Australia, 3 from Japan, 2 from China, and 1 each from Bermuda, El Salvador, Grenada, Ireland, Israel and Sweden.

At first, we didn't know how bad it would be. The front page of the New York Daily News on September 13 suggested 10,000 people had died. It was quickly revised to 5,000, and then, when records were checked to see who was in the Twin Towers and hadn't been found alive, and checking against duplicate entries, down to 3,000, still the worst one-day loss of life on American soil since the American Civil War.

Among the notable people who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks were television producer David Angell, conservative TV legal analyst Barbara Olson, and hockey player-turned-scout Garnet "Ace" Bailey, each of them on board one of the planes intended for Los Angeles. (Bailey was no relation to the old-time hockey star Irvine "Ace" Bailey.) Alice Trillin, a teacher and film producer, and wife of author Calvin Trillin, also died that day, but her death was separate from the attacks.

In 2001, smartphones were few and far between, a lot of us still hadn't really figured out the Internet, and for those of us in the New York Tri-State Area who still didn't have cable TV, Channel 2 was the only station we had left. So we had one channel, and the same damn thing on, for an entire week.

And that's all we watched: Images of the carnage, updates from police and fire department leaders, politicians making statements, pundits speculating about America's response to al-Qaeda and its allies. The parallel was made to the 4 days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. But distractions were few. No regular TV programming. Certainly, no sports, for an entire week, before the various leagues started up again.

Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of New York, put his municipal counter-terrorism center in 7 World Trade Center. They had to evacuate it. He and the others inside nearly died when the North Tower collapsed. He bounced back from this blunder to represent the City and its recovery before the public, and Time magazine named him its Person of the Year, ahead of President George W. Bush -- and Osama bin Laden, who approved and ordered the attacks.

For reasons that aren't worth getting into here, it took until May 1, 2011 for the victims to be avenged. The official memorial at the site was opened on September 11, 2011, the 10th Anniversary of the attacks. And the new One World Trade Center opened on November 3, 2014, with a height purposely set to match the year of America's independence: 1,776 feet.

A temporary memorial at the Pentagon, for the lives lost there, was dedicated on September 12, 2002. A permanent memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2008. The Flight 93 National Memorial was dedicated at the Pennsylvania field on September 10, 2011, the day before the 10th Anniversary. The names of the victims at these sites are also inscribed at the main memorial in Manhattan.

For those of us too young to remember the JFK assassination -- and maybe for those of us who are old enough -- 9/11 remains the most shocking event of our lifetimes. It shouldn't be.

After all, a foreign foe killed 3,000 of us, and our government said it would do whatever it took. And it lied. But the next government did what it took.

*

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 happened in the morning, so there was time to decide to take what was, then as now, the obvious step of postponing most professional sports indefinitely.

Minor League Baseball was already in its Playoffs, and canceled the rest of them. This enabled the Brooklyn Cyclones, a 1st-year farm team of the Mets, to be declared Co-Champions of the Class A New York-Penn League, along with the other team in the Final, the Pennsylvania-based Williamsport Crosscutters. They won their 1st full Pennant in 2019.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced that games would resume the following week, on Monday, September 17.

The games that were scheduled for Tuesday, September 11 through Sunday, September 16 were moved to the week after the end of the regular season, thus pushing the postseason back a week, resulting in the 1st-ever November games that counted in MLB.

These are the games that were supposed to be played on September 11, and got pushed back to Monday, October 1:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-1 at the old Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

* The New York Mets lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-1 at Shea Stadium in Queens.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 1-0 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

* The Tampa Bay Devil Rays beat the Boston Red Sox, 10-3 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. (The Tampa Bay team is now named simply the Rays.

These are the games that were supposed to be played on September 11 that got pushed back to Tuesday, October 2:

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Atlanta Braves, 3-1 at Turner Field in Atlanta.

* The Florida Marlins beat the Montreal Expos, 4-3 at what was then named Pro Player Stadium in Miami Gardens. (The Expos are now the Washington Nationals, the Marlins are the Miami Marlins, they play in Marlins Park, and Pro Player Stadium is now named Hard Rock Stadium.)

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at Comerica Park in Detroit.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-1 at Miller Park in Milwaukee.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Houston Astros, 4-1 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston.

* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Colorado Rockies, 10-1 at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix. (Now named Chase Field.)

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 5-2 at what was then named Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. (It's now SDCCU Stadium, and the Padres now play at Petco Park.)

* The Seattle Mariners beat the team then known as the Anaheim Angels, 14-5 at Edison International Field. (The team is now known as the Los Angeles Angels, and their ballpark as Angel Stadium.)

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Texas Rangers, 9-4 at the Oakland Coliseum.

Not in the country affected by the attacks, UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, decided that the day's Champions League matches would go ahead as scheduled, in spite of some of the teams objecting:

* Arsenal lost to Real Mallorca, 1-0 at Estadio Son Moix on Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain.

* Liverpool and Boavista of Portugal played to a draw, 1-1 at Anfield in Liverpool.

* FC Nantes beat PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands, 4-1 at Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes, France.

* Panathinaikos of Athens, Greece beat Schalke 04, 2-0 at Parkstadion in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

* Real Madrid beat AS Roma, 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

* Dynamo Kyiv and Borussia Dortmund of Germany played to a draw, 2-2 at Olimpiyskiy Natsionalnyi Sportovyi Kompleks in Kyiv, Ukraine.

* Lokomotiv Moscow and Anderlecht of Belgium played to a draw, 1-1 at the Central Dynamo Stadium of Moscow.

* And Galatasaray beat SS Lazio of Rome, 1-0 at Al Sami Yen Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey.

By September 11, 2022, we can determine that there are already two famous people who were born on September 11, 2001: Nicholas Robertson, a left wing for the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs; and actress Mackenzie Aladjem.

April 4, 1973: The Original World Trade Center

The original World Trade Center, with a previous

"tallest building in the world," the Woolworth Building,

between, and dwarfed by, the Twin Towers.

April 4, 1973: The original World Trade Center opens, on the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan. The original complex consists of "Twin Towers": A North Tower, with the address of 1 World Trade Center, 1,368 feet high; and a South Tower, 2 World Trade Center, 1,362 feet high.

It replaces the Empire State Building, 1,250 feet, as the tallest building in the world. It didn't last long as such: A month later, the Sears Tower in Chicago was topped off, at 1,454 feet high. The Empire State Building had 102 floors, while the Twin Towers and the Sears Tower each had 110.

The site was bordered by Vesey Street on the north, Church Street on the east, Liberty Street on the south, and West Street and the West Side Highway on the west. At the time, that was the western edge of Manhattan Island. In the years to come, landfill would extend the Island by 3 blocks to the west, allowing for the building of Battery Park City in 1981 and the World Financial Center in 1985.

From 1921 to 1966, the site was known as Radio Row, full of electronics stores and warehouses. It would be replaced with an idea that had been batted around since 1943, of a "world trade center," uniting the world through commerce.

By the 1950s, the East Side, near the South Street Seaport, was the intended choice. But in 1962, an agreement was reached between Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, Governor Richard J. Hughes of New Jersey, and Austin J. Tobin, director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to build it on the West Side, near the Hudson Terminal of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, which, that year, was renamed the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, or PATH, system.

Minoru Yamasaki designed the towers. They were not as interesting as the Art Deco skyscrapers that had been built in New York in the 1920s and '30s, such as the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. Indeed, while they were a magnificent engineering achievement, they were not artistic marvels. I've often said, "No one loved the Twin Towers until they were gone."

By the end of 1966, Radio Row was completely demolished. Construction began on August 3, 1968. Among the men involved in the construction was an elevator installer for the Otis Elevator Company, who had once been an All-Star for the Brooklyn Dodgers: Carl Furillo. The North Tower was topped out on December 23, 1970; the South Tower, on July 19, 1971. On April 4, 1973, they were formally opened.

The complex was expanded. In 1972, the Deutsche Bank Building opened, 517 feet and 39 stories high, and would receive the address of 5 World Trade Center. 6 World Trade Center, only 92 feet and 8 stories high, opened in 1974, and hosted various federal government offices, including the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Customs Service.

In 1977, 4 World Trade Center opened, at 118 feet and 9 stories. It hosted the New York Board of Trade and the Commodities Exchange Center. The climactic scene of the 1983 comedy film Trading Places was filmed there.

On July 1, 1981, 3 World Trade Center opened. It was a 242-foot, 22-story hotel, known first as the Vista Hotel, and later as the Marriott World Trade Center. The ground around the Center was named Austin J. Tobin Plaza for its founder, and lunchtime concerts were often held there, ranging from classical to rock. The complex was completed in 1987, with 7 World Trade Center, 610 feet and 47 floors, occupied mostly by the investment firm of Smith Barney.

In 1979, a TV antenna was added to the North Tower, raising the complex's height 1,730 feet. This would be 1 foot taller than the antenna atop the Sears Tower. However, by this point, the CN Tower in Toronto had reached 1,815 feet, becoming not "the world's tallest building," because its highest occupiable level wasn't as high as the ones in New York and Chicago, but "the world's tallest freestanding structure."

The Twin Towers messed with the perspective: They were half again as tall as the otherwise tallest buildings in Lower Manhattan. Pictures of Lower Manhattan at the time showed the Towers and a lot of sky. But they were an unmistakable symbol of New York City.

This made them a tempting target for terrorists. In 1993, an attempt was made to bomb them. It badly damaged a parking garage, and killed 6 people. In 2001, the terrorists tried again. They were successful.

*

April 4, 1973 was a Wednesday. Magician David Blaine was born.

The baseball season would begin in 2 days. Football was out of season. But Playoff games were played in pro basketball. Two of them were played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Baltimore Bullets, 103-96 at the Baltimore Civic Center. (It is now named the CFG Bank Arena.) The Knicks did this in spite of the Bullets' Elvin Hayes scoring 36 points and grabbing 14 rebounds.

* And the Boston Celtics beat the Atlanta Hawks, 126-113 at The Omni in Atlanta. "Pistol Pete" Maravich scored 34 points for the Hawks, but it wasn't enough.

And in the American Basketball Association, the only game was a victory by the Utah Stars over the San Diego Conquistadors, 103-92 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City.

Four Stanley Cup Playoff series began on the day: 

* The New York Rangers beat the Boston Bruins, 6-2 at the Boston Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Buffalo Sabres, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 3-0 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the St. Louis Blues, 7-1 at the Chicago Stadium.

And 2 Playoff series of the World Hockey Association began. The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Philadelphia Blazers, 3-2 in overtime at the Cleveland Arena. And the Minnesota Fighting Saints beat the Alberta Oilers, 4-2 at the Edmonton Coliseum. (The Oilers would rename themselves the Edmonton Oilers the next season.)

February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center Is Attacked -- the First Time

February 26, 1993: A bad day. The Branch Davidian siege begins outside Waco, Texas; and a bomb is set off in a parking garage underneath the World Trade Center in New York. It does not bring the Twin Towers down, but it does kill 6 people and injure over 1,000.

The 1,336-pound urea nitrate-hydrogen gas-enhanced device was intended to make the North Tower collapse onto the South Tower, taking down both skyscrapers, and killing tens of thousands of people.

Ramzi Yousef, a 24-year-old Pakistani, and Eyad Ismoil, a 21-year-old Jordanian, drove a yellow Ford Econoline van into the public parking garage beneath the World Trade Center around 12:00 Noon. They parked on the underground B-2 level. Yousef ignited the 20-foot fuse, and fled.

At 12:18 PM, the bomb exploded, instantly cutting off the WTC complex's main electrical power line, knocking out the emergency lighting system. The bomb caused smoke to rise to the 93rd floor of both towers, including through the stairwells, which were not pressurized, and smoke went up the damaged elevators in both towers. With thick smoke filling the stairwells, evacuation was difficult for building occupants and led to many smoke inhalation hospitalizations.

The garage was severely damaged in the explosion, but the North Tower did not collapse. Had the van been parked closer to the WTC's poured concrete foundations, Yousef's plan might have succeeded. 

Those, as yet unknown, who were responsible were treated as criminals by the Democratic Administration, and, within 6 days, the 1st arrest was made. A little over a year later, the 1st convictions were obtained. Within 4 years, all involved were in federal prison.

Eight years later, there was another attack on the World Trade Center, which did bring the Towers down. Those who were responsible were treated as war enemies by the Republican Administration, and they weren’t caught in the remaining 7 years of the Administration. The next Administration, Democratic, obtained justice in a little over 2 years.

Yousef eluded the authorities until February 7, 1995, until he was arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service. In the interim, he had planned, but had to call off, an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan in 1993; left a bomb that killed 25 people at the shrine of Ali al-Ridha (a famous figure of Shia Islam, as al-Qaeda are Sunni) in Mashhad, Iran in 1994; left a bomb on a 1994 Philippines Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo that did not destroy the plane, but killed 1 person, injured 10 others, and forced an emergency landing; and launched the Bojinka plot.

The Bojinka plot was intended to blow up 11 U.S. airliners, crash one into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia; and assassinate Pope John Paul II. It failed on January 31, 1995, when a co-conspirator got scared, and the rest of the plot had to be called off. But, in this plot, we can see the start of the idea to carry out the attacks that were launched on September 11, 2001. Those attacks were approved by Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda. They were planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an uncle of Ramzi Yousef.

Yousef was extradited to the U.S., and convicted in 1996. Ever since, he has been incarcerated at ADX Florence in Colorado, the "supermax" prison from which no prisoner as ever escaped, and put on "Terrorist Row" with Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols and "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski. In 2007, he claimed to have converted to Christianity.

*

February 26, 1993 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 12 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Detroit Pistons, 108-80 at The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan. Joe Dumars led all scorers on the night with 43 points. The Knicks were on the road, so the decision of whether to postpone the game never came up.

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Portland Trail Blazers, 102-91 at the Brendan Byrne Arena. Despite the Meadowlands' proximity to Lower Manhattan, no thought was given to postponing this game, and the attendance was listed as 20,049, a sellout. At the time, the Nets were 30-24, fighting the Knicks for the Atlantic Division title, and the Blazers were 32-18 and the defending Western Conference Champions. Both teams, however, would end up losing in the 1st round of the Playoffs.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 114-111 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Washington Bullets, 92-91 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Atlanta Hawks, 110-99 at The Omni in Atlanta. Dominique Wilkins, known for his dunks as "The Human Highlight Film," scored 36 in defeat. Kevin Gamble led the Celtics with 27.

* The Miami Heat beat the San Antonio Spurs, 93-86 at the Miami Arena.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Charlotte Hornets, 137-105 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. Rik Smith scored 37 for the Pacers.

* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Dallas Mavericks, 99-89 at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Utah Jazz, 113-106 at the America West Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the Golden State Warriors, 106-98 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 114-102 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Seattle Supersonics beat the Sacramento Kings, 141-120 at the ARCO Arena in Sacramento.

And there were 3 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers and the Calgary Flames played to a tie, 4-4 at the Saddledome in Calgary.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Buffalo Sabres, 6-4 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Winnipeg Jets, 7-4 at the Winnipeg Arena.