Remembering Sept 11, 2001: most of my students were age 8

New York, NY
Originally uploaded by apertur3

Lesson 1 in an ongoing unit on Manhattan:

Manhattan is an island of some 24 miles length.
On the west: the Hudson River and New Jersey.
On the north: across the Harlem River, the borough called the Bronx.
On the NE: it's not far to the state line with Connecticut.
On the east: the East River and Long Island.
On Long Island: the boroughs known as Brooklyn and Queens.
On the south: NY harbor and the borough of Staten Island.
On the south and east: the Atlantic.

The World Trade Center was on the southern tip of Manhattan. It was part of the Wall St Financial District.

The 9-11 attack, executed by 19 terrorists, resulted in some 3000 deaths. Wikipedia points out that some 16,000 people in the WTC escaped death by their evacuation.

At the time, the chief Al Qaeda training camps were in Afghanistan. The Taliban government, an extremist Muslim faction, allowed Al Qaeda to operate in Afghanistan.