The attacks of September 11th, 2001 came as a huge surprise, shocking the world and immediately taking over the news all around the world. For the first time in history, all non-emergency civilian aircraft in the United States were grounded for three days. Al-Qaeda is an international Islamist extremist terrorist network founded in the late 1980s by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. military operation on May 1, 2011, and others who were involved in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Their aim has been to overthrow governments in the Middle East, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, which do not strictly enforce a religiously sanctioned political and social order. Attacks against the United States were intended to reduce American support for many of these governments; U.S. support was viewed by al-Qaeda as a major obstacle to creating a global order under Islamic authority.
The hijacked Flight 11 was crashed into floors 93 to 99 of the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. The hijacked Flight 175 struck floors 77 to 85 of the South Tower17 minutes later at 9:03 a.m. When the towers were struck, between 16,400 and 18,000 people were in the WTC complex. Of those, the vast majority evacuated safely. As they rushed out, first responders rushed in trying to save those still trapped or injured.
The fires from the impacts were intensified by the planes’ burning jet fuel. They weakened the steel support trusses, which attached each of the floors to the buildings’ exterior walls. Along with the initial damage to the buildings’ structural columns, this ultimately caused both towers to collapse. The five other buildings in the WTC complex were also destroyed because of damage sustained when the Twin Towers fell. The collapse of the buildings left the site devastated, with ruins towering roughly 17 stories and spread beyond the 16-acre site.
Many volunteers came to Ground Zero to help with the rescue, and cleanup and on May 30, 2002, the last piece of WTC steel was removed. Two months after the attacks, Congress made airport security federal by passing the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which created the Transportation Security Administration. Before 9/11, each airport had handled security. In 2002, the number of tourist visas given to Pakistani citizens fell almost 70 percent and immigrant visas dropped more than 40 percent compared to 2001. It wasn’t until 2008 that Pakistani immigrant and tourist visas to reach pre-9/11 levels.
Anti-Islamic violence in America jumped after the attacks. According to the FBI, 28 hate crimes committed in 2000 were found to be anti-Islamic. In 2001, that number jumped to 481, and it remained above 100 in subsequent years. The Department of Homeland Security was created just after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when Tom Ridge was appointed to serve as the first Secretary of Homeland Security. However, it was not considered to be an independent office until November 2002, when Congress passed the Homeland Security Act. The first day of business for the new office was March 1, 2003.

The Homeland Security Act was a bill sponsored by former Congressman Richard Armey to create a department that could fulfill a threefold primary mission: prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism; and minimize the damage, and assist in the recovery, from terrorist attacks that do occur within the United States. On September 20, 2001, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Bush stated: “Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
No distinction was made between a harboring state and the terrorists it was harboring. The U.S. government insisted that the Taliban immediately hand over the terrorists and close the training camps or face an attack from the United States. When they refused, "Operation Enduring Freedom" was launched on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of 9/11.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum opened on May 21, 2014. It is located beneath the Memorial plaza. Visitors enter the Memorial Museum through a pavilion where two steel “tridents” remnants of the North Tower and stands in the building’s atrium. The main exhibition space is located seven stories below the 9/11 Memorial at the bedrock foundations of the World Trade Center. The Museum offers displays of artifacts from the WTC and 9/11 attacks, interactive exhibitions, contemplative areas, and programs that convey individual and collective stories relating the experiences of survivors, responders, area residents and eyewitnesses. A memorial exhibition honors the individual victims of the attacks.