It is one of those questions that seems simple on the surface but actually carries layers of history. Most people, when they ask when was the bombing of the twin towers, are looking for September 11, 2001. That is the day the world stopped. But if you’re a history buff or someone who lived through the nineties in New York City, you know there is another, earlier date that often gets tucked away in the back of the collective memory.
The World Trade Center wasn't just attacked once.
History is messy. It doesn't always happen in a single, isolated moment. To really understand the timeline of the Twin Towers, you have to look at two distinct events: February 26, 1993, and September 11, 2001. One was a truck bomb in a basement; the other was a coordinated aerial strike that changed global geopolitics forever.
The First Attack: February 26, 1993
People forget.
Before the high-definition footage of 2001, there was the smoke-filled darkness of 1993. At exactly 12:17 p.m. on a cold Friday in February, a yellow Ryder rental van exploded. It wasn't on the street. It was parked on the B-2 level of the underground garage in the North Tower.
The blast was massive. Honestly, it’s a miracle the building stood. The attackers, led by Ramzi Yousef, used a 1,310-pound urea nitrate-hydrogen gas enhanced device. Their goal? They wanted the North Tower to topple into the South Tower. They wanted both to come down. They failed in that specific, horrific goal, but they still caused absolute chaos.
Six people died that day. Thousands were injured.
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The smoke rose through the stairwells like a chimney. You had people trapped in elevators for hours, including a group of schoolchildren. It took years for the legal system to catch up with the perpetrators. Ramzi Yousef was eventually captured in Pakistan in 1995. His uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would later become the "architect" of the second attack. It's all connected, which is the part that really messes with your head when you look back at the timeline.
When Was the Bombing of the Twin Towers? The 9/11 Timeline
Then came 2001. This is the date everyone remembers. Tuesday morning. Clear blue skies.
At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower.
At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower.
The word "bombing" is technically a bit of a misnomer for 9/11—it was an aerial assault using commercial airliners as kinetic weapons—but in the heat of the moment, many people on the ground thought bombs were going off. The sheer force of the impact and the subsequent ignition of thousands of gallons of jet fuel created a disaster that no skyscraper was ever designed to withstand.
The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m.
The North Tower followed at 10:28 a.m.
If you are looking for the exact moment the towers fell, those are your timestamps. Within less than two hours, the tallest landmarks in the New York skyline were gone. It wasn't just about the buildings, though. 2,977 victims died across all sites that day, including those at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
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Why the 1993 Bombing Matters Today
You can't really talk about 9/11 without acknowledging 1993. Why? Because the 1993 bombing was the "wake-up call" that many officials sort of hit the snooze button on.
After the '93 blast, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spent about $700 million on safety upgrades. They added battery-powered emergency lights. They put reflective paint in the stairwells. They restricted parking in the garages. These changes actually saved lives in 2001. When the lights went out on 9/11, people could see the glow-in-the-dark strips on the stairs. They knew where to go because they had practiced evacuations—something that wasn't common before the first bombing.
It’s a grim reality. The lessons learned in blood in 1993 gave thousands of people the chance to escape eight years later.
Surprising Details Most People Miss
Most folks think of the towers as these indestructible monoliths. They weren't. They were "tube-frame" structures. This meant the outer walls carried most of the load.
When the 1993 bomb went off, it blew a hole 100 feet wide through several layers of concrete. If the van had been parked just a few feet closer to a main support column, the North Tower might have actually tipped. That is a terrifying thought that engineers debated for years.
Also, consider the "blind spots" in security. Between 1993 and 2001, the focus was largely on ground-based threats. Car bombs. Suicide vests. Nobody was seriously planning for a scenario where multiple jumbo jets were used as missiles. It was considered "movie plot" territory by many intelligence agencies, despite several warnings that al-Qaeda was looking at aviation.
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The Impact on New York City
New York is a different city now. Before the bombings, you could basically walk into the lobby of the Twin Towers and hang out. There were shops, a huge underground mall, and transit hubs that felt wide open.
Today, the site is home to the 11-September Memorial & Museum. It’s beautiful, but it’s heavy. The footprints of the original towers are now recessed pools with waterfalls. If you visit, you’ll see the names of the victims from both 1993 and 2001 etched in bronze. They are grouped together because the city views it as one long, painful story.
Actionable Steps for Understanding the History
If you're researching this for a project or just because you want to pay your respects, don't just stick to the Wikipedia summary. The history is deeper than that.
- Visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum Website: They have an extensive digital archive. You can listen to oral histories from survivors of both the 1993 and 2001 attacks.
- Read the 9/11 Commission Report: It’s a thick book, but the first few chapters explain exactly how the intelligence failures led from the 1993 bombing to the 2001 disaster. It is surprisingly readable for a government document.
- Check out the "Reflecting Absence" design: Understand the architecture of the current memorial. It helps process the scale of what was lost.
- Search for the 1993 Commemorative Fountain: There was a beautiful fountain dedicated to the 1993 victims. It was actually destroyed during the 2001 attacks, though a fragment was later recovered.
Knowing the dates—February 26, 1993, and September 11, 2001—is just the start. The real value is in understanding how these events reshaped security, architecture, and the way we move through the world today. Every time you take your shoes off at the airport or scan an ID to enter an office building, you're living in the aftermath of those two days.
The Twin Towers are gone, but the timeline of their destruction remains a crucial lesson in vigilance and resilience.