Yahoo News Screenshots from 9/11
September 11th, 2011 by Benj Edwards
The Full Coverage page of Yahoo News on 9/11/2001 at 2:03 PM EDT.
A special terrorism page of Yahoo news on 9/11/2001 at 2:03 PM EDT.
I took these screenshots of the Yahoo News website ten years ago today — on the afternoon of September 11th, 2001. I had recently driven home from the campus of NC State University, which I attended at the time, and checked online for more details about the attacks.
The headlines seen here, with their blunt assessment of the dramatic and unprecedented events that unfolded earlier that morning, were very hard to mentally grasp. I felt like I was witnessing a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie made horribly real.
That’s why I took these screenshots. I thought I’d never believe myself, in recounting the events of that day, if I didn’t grab some evidence of what it was like to witness it at the time. I’m glad I did. I also filled four VHS tapes with TV news coverage of the event so I could show my future children what it was like. I’m not sure I will be able to summon the courage to watch them for quite some time.
September 11th, 2011 at 7:12 am
Benj, if you want, I would be happy to digitize those tapes for you so that you don’t lose the content. If that is of interest to you, contact your cousin(-in-law?) Drew at DELTA.
September 11th, 2011 at 10:12 am
That screenshot also serves as an interesting technology time capsule. You were still loyal to Netscape Navigator in 2001. Programs that were important to you at the time included: WinAMP, zMUD, Paint Shop Pro, and CuteFTP.
September 11th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Yeah, I thought that was interesting too, Mike. I thought, “I was still using Netscape 4.7 in 2001?” Then I remembered that I couldn’t run Mozilla Suite well on that 233 MHz Pentium II computer with 64 or 128MB of RAM, so I didn’t start using it until later. And I really didn’t like Internet Explorer at all. I had previously been a professional web developer, so I had a heck of a time making pages display well in both Netscape and IE. It was maddening.
Technologizer has a neat piece that discusses technology differences between 2001 and 2011. It cites a 2001 survey that lists browser market share as follows: Internet Explorer: 89.03 percent. Netscape: 10.47 percent. That leaves 0.5 percent for everything else.
zMUD in the screenshot is interesting too. That means I was on my favorite MUSH at the time, no doubt discussing events of the day. I probably have a log of that somewhere. I used CuteFTP to maintain websites via FTP, WinAmp as my MP3 player of choice, and Paint Shop Pro for graphics.
September 11th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
I find it interesting that you has MS-DOS (as in command.com) on your quick launch bar.
I wish I’d had the foresight to take screenshots from that terrible day.
September 11th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
wow… it is incredible that you had the screenshot of the news at that time.
i can’t even remember @2001 what browser i used as main browser. this was before XP, right?
but i know i used winamp that year and still using it one decade later.
crazy and sad day. not only for the lives lost that day and later during war against terrorism, but this was the starting day of attack against my religion…
September 12th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
I kept up with the day’s events via Slashot. One of the few services that kept running under the load of readers/viewers. CNN was just about worthless that day.
September 16th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
I just remember the servers at cnn.com were crushed that day.
January 30th, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Sir Fatty: I, too, kept up via Slashdot that day. Every other major news site was overloaded and slow.
I woke up, turned on the TV and saw the Trade Center on fire. At first, I thought it was a report about a bad fire in one of the towers. As I was processing this, the second plane it and the correspondent said, “Oh my God… another plane just hit.” The shock was something I never want to experience again.
I remember having a record sales day at my arcade that day. Many of my customers came in to take their mind off what was going on and/or to take their aggressions out on my games. Many of my regulars brought in printouts, such as Bin Laden wanted posters and Statue of Liberty with an upraised middle finger with the caption, “We’re coming, Mother F’ers!” I also remember a couple of the local gas stations jacking their prices up to over $4.00 a gallon (I think gas was around $1.75-$2.00 at the time) and getting hugely fined for it. One of them went out of business shortly after the fines were handed down.
Truly a day to never forget…
February 19th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
I could’ve SWORN I saw a link from this site that had a page with screenshots of many companies from September 11th, 2001. Google turns up nothing…anyone remember?