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I was watching TV at the time. At each commercial break they said "Turn to Sky News Channel for news on the attack on America" and a few seconds of footage of the towers being hit. As the channel I was watching was owned by the same people who owned the Sky News Channel I assumed it was a joke, an attempt to get you to watch their news channel, so ignored it. Later I switched on my computer and found I was getting 404's on all the American sites. I cannot remember if I phoned my ISP and got a recorded message from them, or if I checked my email and found a message from them there, but whichever it was I got a message from my ISP telling me that they were sorry that I may be experiencing problems getting American sites but their main connection with the US was via a company whose equipment was near the Twin Towers, so was down, and with the extra traffic from people surfing for information on the terrorist attack their only other US connection could not cope with the load. That was when I knew it was true, but even then I checked all three news channels to be sure it was not a hoax, I simply could not believe it was possible.
At the time I was working on a local community project in my spare time, and we were hoping for some funding from the local council, so I was keeping my head down on the adult side in case someone at the council found out and used that as a reason for not funding us. So I was keeping well away from the boards. But as soon as my ISP made it possible for me to get online to US sites I had to write posts of sympathy on all the boards I knew at that time.
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