On one bright Tuesday morning 25 years ago today, our whole world changed. A city reeled. A war unlike any other in American history began.

A generation of young adults has a hazy understanding at best of what transpired on Sept. 11, 2001, of the depth of the damage done, of its wider significance. In the service of national memory, this is our attempt to set down what happened on that day and in its aftermath.

Nineteen fanatics, acting in the name of Islam, killed 2,997 innocent men, women and children in New York City, in Washington, and on airplanes turned into weapons of mass murder.

The shock and pain rippled outward, to sons and daughters who lost mothers and fathers, to parents who lost children, to sisters and brothers, to friends.

The death and injury and destruction dealt this, the........

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