U.S. marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks

Amer­i­cans com­mem­o­rat­ed the 25th an­niver­sary of 9/11 on Fri­day, re­mem­ber­ing the shock, the dead and the sweep­ing con­se­quences of the al-Qai­da at­tacks on sym­bols of U.S. might and pros­per­i­ty.

The mile­stone an­niver­sary brought memo­r­i­al rit­u­als — wreath-lay­ing, flag-fly­ing, mo­ments of si­lence, vig­ils and read­ings of vic­tims’ names — and vol­un­teer projects in trib­ute to a day that about half of U.S. adults re­mem­ber as the most his­toric event of their life­time, ac­cord­ing to a new poll. On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qai­da ex­trem­ists hi­jacked four com­mer­cial jets and crashed them in­to New York’s World Trade Cen­ter, the Pen­ta­gon and a field near Shanksville, Penn­syl­va­nia, killing near­ly 3,000 peo­ple.

Elsie Cald­well car­ried a pho­to­graph of her son Ken­ny Cald­well to the trade cen­ter to hear his name and all the oth­ers read aloud Fri­day morn­ing. She last spoke to him that morn­ing a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago.