Powerful photos from the 9/11 attacks that Americans will never forget

Smoke pours from the twin towers of the World Trade Center after they were hit by two hijacked airliners in a terrorist attack September 11, 2001 in New York City.Getty Images/Robert Giroux

• It’s been 17 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
• But for millions of Americans, haunting memories of that day are still fresh, and many lives were changed forever. 

On 9/11, terrorists hijacked four planes and were able to crash two of them into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York and one into the Pentagon.

The remaining jet crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers overpowered the hijackers.

A day that started out with clear blue skies ended with a mass of twisted, smoldering metal where the Twin Towers once stood, leaving 2,977 people dead in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, along with the 19 hijackers.

September 11 happened almost two decades ago. One-quarter of Americans are too young to remember it. I have three kids who have no memory of it at all — they weren’t born yet. But as they’ve grown older, they’ve started to ask questions. 

We certainly don’t want to forget about 9/11, even as we get on with our lives and confront new challenges. So in memory of that day, here are 24 images that capture what no American should forget. And as someone living in New York City at the time, I can tell you what it was like to witness the tragedy as it unfolded.

Brittany Fowler contributed to a previous version of this story.