September 11, 2001
More than two decades after September 11, 2001, nearly every American knows the basic outline of what happened that morning. Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers boarded four commercial airliners. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were flown into the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. The official 9/11 Commission concluded that the 19 hijackers had boarded those four transcontinental flights with the intention of transforming them into weapons. Yet there is another story from…