Rememberances

September 11, 2001 was not the first time that the World Trade Center in New York had been targetted in a terrorist attack. On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb went off in the underground garage. Six people died, and over one thousand were injured (most by smoke inhalation). A memorial was created to those victims; that memorial was destroyed - and only one fragment of it has since been recovered - in the 2001 attack. A new memorial to those victims of the first WTC attack was dedicated today, incorporating that remaining fragment of the original.

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On Friday, February 25, 2005, retired TWA flight attendant Uli Derickson died. Ms Derickson was able to save the lives of all but one of the passengers on a June 14, 1985, TWA flight from Athens to Rome, which had been hijacked by 2 armed gunmen. She did this through variously confronting the hijackers, singing the favorite ballad of one of them, bribing a ground crew into refuelling the plane, and hiding the passports she was ordered to sort for "Jewish names". The one passenger that she was unable to save was a US Navy diver. Ms Derickson has seemingly been forgotten, but she is one person to whom the appellation "hero" truly applies.