I saw this during the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York city
We're in northern Ontario in Canada and I was with my wife and her mother. My mother in law was a great lady, tiny, Irish Canadian completely and with a heart of gold. She had lived through the second world War where she lost her husband, her husband's brother, three other of her husband's brothers who were in the war and a long list of friends she saw leave school to take part in the war and some of them not come back, some completely psychologically destroyed and others just surviving life.
She was making chili that morning when we got up. I turned on the TV and couldn't believe what we were watching. It was like a movie. We watched live the first burning building and then soon after watched the second plane crash on live TV. It was surreal.
My mother in law came in and watched with us for a while. We were glued to the TV and waited for more .... all day! My mother in law got up after five minutes and went back to her chili.
We told her this was historic. You can't miss it.
She said she's already lived through wars, near wars, threatened nuclear war, end of the world predictions, fall of the Soviet Union and a whole bunch more.
She said she felt bad for everyone but we can't do anything right now.
She went back to cooking her chili.