On the way to school on 9/11. I was running late since my first class started at 8:30. It was 8:45 when I got to WTC (I pass it every morning during my commute). I saw the first plane flying into the first tower.
There was so much misinformation going on. I immediately called my sister (she worked in the North Tower) to make sure she was okay. Luckily, turned out she was at a client meeting that morning and she said she had heard a news helicopter had hit the tower. I told her no, I saw a commercial plane crash into the towers with my own eyes, not a helicopter.
For a good 10-15 minutes, the news were reporting news helicopter crashing, a single-passenger private plane crashing, a bomb, etc. I had stopped on the corner of Church & Liberty and didn't keep heading to school.
Up until this moment, it was all confusion and misinformation. I had no sense of "witnessing a historical moment", because up until that point, nobody really thought much of it, just an accident.
It was when the second plane buzzed above us right into the second tower that everyone screamed in terror. I witnessed that too. As a New Yorker, I saw a lot of crazy things growing up here, fights, car accidents, the workers -- so I just wrote off the first plane as an accident and simply thought "oh man, that sucks, I hope everyone's okay".
But it was the second plane that instilled a sense of complete paralyzing fear. I didn't think "this was a historical moment", of course -- I don't think anyone present thought that. I just thought "fuck!" Followed by "what the hell is going on?!"
It was when someone mentioned the words "terrorist" and "under attack" that it finally started clicking. That it was what I was witnessing.
I finally decided I had stayed long enough and I had better leave the area, so I headed to school about 2 minutes after the second plane.
When I got to school, classes weren't happening. Everyone was just glued to the TV/radio/looking out the window. It was an hour or so after that the first tower collapsed. And when I saw it on the screen, I was frozen with complete, utter despair.
I never had an "understanding" that I was witnessing something "historical". Because the way that's phrased, sounds like you had to have the presence of mind to realize you're witnessing something "big". I never had that feeling. It was a lot of emotions but that wasn't one of them.