September 11, 2001: A day of terror
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The South Tower collapsed at 10:05 a.m.; the adjacent North Tower fell 23 minutes later.
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(CNN) -- America was under attack.
Not since the Japanese targeted Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, had the United States faced such a large, coordinated strike by its enemies on home soil. But on September 11, 2001, terrorists shattered Americans' sense of security.
December 7, 1941, included, the country had never experienced anything so deadly, destructive or terrifying on its own soil as what unfolded on that sunny late summer morning.
Nineteen men, later linked with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, hijacked four commercial airliners.
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 Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. 
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-- President Bush
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Two of the planes slammed into the World Trade Center in New York, another crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the fourth plummeted into a field in rural Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks.
Those deaths, as well as widespread fears of future attacks, took its toll on America. But there were also many positive stories of courage, unity and hope.
"Let's roll," one of the last words of United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer shortly before he and others rushed to wrestle control from their hijackers, became a national rallying cry.
Americans turned out in mass to honor firemen, police officers and other civil servants after their New York and Washington, D.C., counterparts' heroic efforts on September 11.
And the United States, politically split by the contentious 2000 presidential election decided nine months earlier, united behind President Bush.
The day's events also spawned a war on terror, a global initiative to bankrupt and eradicate al Qaeda and its allies.
