It’s hard to write about September 11. The remembrance of that day hangs over and darkens our time, at least in the US. It doesn’t help to realize that whenever you look up the notable events of any day of the year, most of what’s been remembered has to do with inhumanity. September 11 certainly had its share long before the events of 2001. And a couple of dozen years, when it comes to the effects of things that have happened on September 11, is not very long.
The Battle of Teutoburg Forest, which started the day before, ended on September 11 with somewhere around 20,000 Roman soldiers dead. Its effect was to establish the northern border of the Roman Empire for the next four centuries. Thanks to one of the coincidences that happens all the time in history, another September 11 event had effects for centuries, too. It’s the day Henry Hudson stumbled across the island of Manhattan, in 1609. He was credited with “discovering” it, although there were already people living there. The Hudson River had at least one name already too, but nobody seems to remember it.
September 11, 2001 didn’t just happen in Manhattan; another attack targeted the Pentagon, where 184 people died. It was sixty years after ground was first broken for that building, on September 11, 1941. The building was completed on September 11, 1950, and was the site of all the planning approved that day by President Truman when he announced that troops would march north of the 38th parallel into what we now call North Korea.
Every time there’s a sad, or savage, or shockingly inhuman event, whether it’s on a September 11 or not, there are resolutions to be better, be different, not to let the same kinds of sad events recur. People must have felt that way after September 11, 1857, when one group of settlers in Utah met with another group under a white flag of truce, then massacred all 120 of them and tried to hide the bodies. Same thing after September 11, 1541 in Santiago, Chile, where eight indigenous chiefs were held hostage by the Spanish. The tribes tried to free their chiefs, only to watch the Spanish behead them all and roll the heads across the town square.
And preparations more inhumanity continue. As recently as September 11, 2007, which is the day the biggest non-nuclear bomb in history was tested in Russia. They named it the Father of All Bombs, invoking the US equivalent Mother of All Bombs, which is nearly as destructive. Whether anybody is working on the Grandfather of all Bombs seems to still be classified.
The events recounted about this date are unusually dark and tragic. That doesn’t impugn the events themselves though — it has to do with human perception and remembrance. Every date includes events that evoke hope and happiness as well as those that call up sadness and despair. William Sydney Porter knew that as well as anyone; his stories combine both the upside and the downside of everyday life. But he’s not remembered by his name. Instead it’s his pen name, O. Henry, that’s listed next to his birthday — September 11.
