September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Additional people died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks.
Stuyvesant High School
Nine alumni were killed in the World Trade Center attack. Another alumnus, Richard Ben-Veniste of the class of 1960, was on the 9/11 Commission. On October 2, 2001, the school newspaper, "The Spectator", created a special 24-page full-color 9/11 insert containing student photos, reflections and stories. On November 20, 2001, the magazine was distributed for free to the greater metropolitan area, enclosed within 830,000 copies of "The New York Times". In the months after the attacks, Annie Thoms, an English teacher at Stuyvesant and the theater adviser at the time, suggested that the students take accounts of staff and students' reactions during and after September 11, 2001, and turn them into a series of monologues. Thoms then published these monologues as "With Their Eyes: September 11—The View from a High School at Ground Zero".