THE ⁹⁄₁₁ TRAGEDY HAPPENED 23 YEARS AGO TODAY

Twenty-three years ago, the United States experienced one of the darkest days in its history: the devastating al-Qaeda terrorist attacks.

On Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, four air­lin­ers were hijacked by ter­ror­ists, with two crash­ing into the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers in New York City, a third into the Pen­ta­gon in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and the fourth in Penn­syl­va­nia.

In this hor­rif­ic tragedy, 2,977 inno­cent lives were lost, rep­re­sent­ing 77 dif­fer­ent nations. Addi­tion­al­ly, 24 indi­vid­u­als remain miss­ing, and over 6,000 were injured. The loss and pain of that day are felt across the globe.

Every year, Sep­tem­ber 11 is a solemn day of remem­brance, hon­or­ing the vic­tims and the heroes who dis­played extra­or­di­nary courage in the face of unimag­in­able ter­ror. The Ath­letes for Free­dom Foun­da­tion mourns along­side the world, pay­ing trib­ute to those who were lost and those who stood brave­ly dur­ing those har­row­ing hours.