People Are Remembering Wild And Newsworthy Events That Happened In 2001 But Were Forgotten Because Of 9/11
This year will mark the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Some of us, like myself, have lived in a post-9/11 world longer than we did in a pre-one. However, there are also now a lot of adults who were either too young or not even born when 9/11 happened. The impact of that day might be hard to put into context for them, but if I were to try to make a somewhat modern comparison, it would be like if all of COVID happened in a day.
Because of the magnitude of 9/11, other newsworthy events that happened, were happening, or happened afterward literally fell out of public consciousness. An example that I vividly remember, and that gets brought up within this post, is the complete media frenzy that surrounded Congressman Gary Condit and the disappearance of Chandra Levy the entire summer of 2001. After the attacks, the story completely disappeared from the media and people's minds.
Recently, Reddit user NightNo423 brought up the topic of those forgotten events and news stories when they asked: "What crazy stuff happened in the year 2001 that got overshadowed by 9/11?"
The thread went viral and received over 6.6K comments, and if you were old enough in 2001, you'll probably remember many of them. Below are the top and most-often repeated events that were overshadowed by 9/11:
1."American Airlines Flight 587. It was an Airbus A300 that crashed in Queens, NY, two months after 9/11. It was the second-deadliest aviation accident in US history, and not well remembered."
"As a NY'er, I remember this vividly. All of the local news channels were immediately questioning whether or not it was another terrorist attack. It was terrifying."
2."Air Transat Flight 236. The plane was flying from Toronto to Lisbon, ran out of fuel in the middle of the Atlantic, and glided 75 miles to an airport in the Azores and safely landed. The longest glide of a passenger airliner. It happened three weeks before 9/11."
3."George W. Bush issued an executive order banning federal funding for research on any new embryonic stem cell lines going forward. He interrupted evening TV and gave a live address to the nation to announce it on August 9th. His next address to the nation was on September 11th."
4."Congressman Gary Condit admitted to having an affair with Chandra Levy, a 24-year-old intern, who had gone missing and was later found murdered."
"The disappearance of Chandra Levy. It was the top story then dropped off the news completely."
"In 2009, another man was convicted of murdering Levy, so Condit didn't do it. What sunk Condit's career was that in '98, he was one of the Democrats heavily admonishing Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky, and three years later, his own affair partner was outed after she disappeared. So, him being a hypocrite about the sanctity of marriage and the scandal of him possibly being involved in Levy's disappearance did in his political career."
5."A paraglider accidentally entangled himself on the torch of the Statue of Liberty."
"Out of all of the things listed, this is the only one that triggered a faint memory of it happening, lol."
6."A huge investigation revealed that the McDonald's Monopoly game promotion had been rigged since 1995 and had almost no legitimate winners for the big prizes. Jerry Jacobson — who was head of security for the company that printed the Monopoly game pieces and was in charge of securing and delivering the most valuable ones to McDonald’s packaging plants — was giving winning pieces to friends and family, and later the mafia. Jacobson was arrested in a sting operation that summer and the trial for him and his co-conspirators started on Sept. 10, 2001."
7."I lived where the anthrax hit in 2001, just days after 9/11. They had to close down our post office, and for weeks, there was no mail, then finally, bills came radiated and in plastic bags. You couldn’t open any of the mail — it was just stuck together. And this was back in the days before you could pay bills online."
"The anthrax attacks and D.C. sniper don't get talked about enough. They were, or at least felt like, part of 9/11 at the time and were a major contributing factor to the climate in the country that led to the approval of the next decade-plus of the Global War on Terrorism."
8."In Feb. 2001, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for selling classified info to Soviet and Russian intelligence agencies. He’d been conducting this espionage since 1985. I feel like it was big news for like a month, then died down once he was thrown into a federal supermax prison. I always sort of linked the two, his arrest and 9/11, since they happened the same year."
"A result of 9/11, a lot of people forget that lots of spy rings were broken up. The most famous example is Ana Montes."
9."The Hainan Island incident in April 2001. A Chinese jet clipped a US Navy EP-3 surveillance plane off the coast of China. The jet crashed in the sea, and the US plane made an unauthorized emergency landing in China. It was the first major geopolitical mess of George W. Bush's presidency. Gave the world a somewhat major incident. I got briefly concerned as a teenager."
10."The Nepalese royal massacre on June 1, 2001. Nine members of the royal family were killed in the royal palace, including the King. It was the Crown Prince, who died three days later after being in a coma and being crowned the new king, who was responsible."
"The Crown Prince opened fire in the palace, killing damn everyone in line for royal succession, and then he shot himself in the head. There was no attempt to become the king (though he was made king while in a coma), he just killed everyone else in line."
11."On Sept. 6, 2001, the US government announced that it would not break up Microsoft as a monopoly."
12."In the summer of 2001, Fox aired a documentary-styled murder mystery reality show called Murder In Small Town X. The finale aired just a week before 9/11. The winner of the first and only season, Angel Juarbe Jr., was a firefighter, and he was one of the first responders at the World Trade Center and died. With so much else that happened on 9/11, one of the victims, being a reality TV star, was surprisingly rarely brought up."
13."The movie Zoolander flopped, relatively speaking, at the box office because it came out right after 9/11."
"I want to say Roger Ebert brings up 9/11 in his review of Zoolander, and it's part of the reason he gives it a bad score. A lot of his criticism seemed to be a forced connection to 9/11 stuff, really weird."
14."Not 'crazy' by any stretch, but I remember that the first time after 9/11 that the top story on the news wasn't in any way related to it was the death of George Harrison in November."
15."Cantor Fitzgerald, who had offices in the World Trade Center, represented the single largest loss among any single organization in the attacks."
"Their offices were on floors 101–105 of the North Tower. All of their employees that were at work that day died. They lost 658 people."
16."The OG iPod launched in October."
—VGWN
"This is the one that messes with my perception of time the most. I remember when my first friend got an iPod and how awesome it was while I was still futzing around with MP3 CD players (Rio Audio, anyone?). But it’s totally disconnected from my memories of 9/11, despite only being a month apart. Wild."
17."The Boston Globe had all the information ready to release, uncovering the rampant sex abuse being covered up by the Catholic Church. After 9/11, they decided to wait to release it."
18."Thuy Trang (the Yellow Power Ranger from Might Morphin' Power Rangers) passed away in a car accident on Sept. 3, 2001. I was a big MMPR fan, and I don’t remember hearing about that."
19."There were several shark attacks in the US that summer, leading Time magazine to dub it the 'Summer of the Shark.' There was a ton of news coverage about it."
"Was looking for this. I remember a ton of shark attacks that summer leading up to 9/11."
20."There were investigative articles about Bernie Madoff in 2001, that questioned how legitimate his assets were. They were ignored, which allowed him to further commit fraud until the Great Recession."
21."Aaliyah died on Aug. 25, 2001. I feel like we didn’t even get to grieve her, and then 9/11 happened."
"Her death was a big news story since she was so young, talented, and a rising star. She was just about on the same level as Britney, Christina, Pink, Destiny's Child, etc., and it was so tragically avoidable. But once 9/11 happened, the story definitely took a backseat for the rest of the year."
"I remember thinking Aaliyah's death might have been a bigger pop-culture moment if 9/11 hadn't come so soon after."
22."Michael Jackson released an album [his last] two weeks earlier. Actually, now that I think about it — Michael was supposed to be in one of the towers that day for a meeting but overslept."
"Michael Jackson just finished the weekend reuniting with his brothers for a pair of sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden on Friday, September 7, and Monday, September 10. These shows doubled as both an anniversary show of Michael Jackson's 30 years as a performer and as a comeback from his legal and drug problems in the '90s. The second show would end less than 12 hours before the first crash.
Guests included Macaulay Culkin, Usher, Chris Tucker, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Elizabeth Taylor, Destiny's Child, Whitney Houston, Samuel L. Jackson, 98 Degrees, Missy Elliot, Mya, Liza Minelli, Aaron Carter, Slash, Monica, Nelly Furtado, Ray Charles, Gloria Estefan, James Ingram, Shaggy, and Marlon Brando.Secondly, Michael Jackson would go on to headline a celebrity charity single and concert à la "We Are The World" called United We Stand: What More Can I Give?. It was finally released as a charity single to little fanfare throughout 2002 and 2003, overshadowed by more popular 9/11 songs by Alan Jackson and performances by U2 at the Super Bowl.
If it hadn't been for 9/11, Michael Jackson's comeback would have probably been more successful."
23.And lastly, "The original teaser trailer for the first Raimi Spider-Man was quickly buried for showing a helicopter trapped in a web between the two towers."
Sony/ JoBlo Superheroes / Via youtube.com
You can read the original thread on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
