NEWS REPORT: “There’s been an explosion deep below the one hundred-ten story towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.”

On February twenty-sixth, nineteen-ninety-three, members of al-Qaida attacked the World Trade Center in New York City.

A New York City police officer helps a victim of the February 26, 1993, bomb attack at the World Trade Center

The terrorists left a truck loaded with explosives in an underground parking garage.

NEWS REPORT: “By early afternoon, Lower Manhattan looked like a war zone. Office workers, faces blackened with smoke and soot, hundreds gasping for breath, staggered into the frigid February air.”

The attack killed six people and injured more than one thousand others. The government later captured those responsible for the bombing.

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On April nineteenth, nineteen ninety-five, terrorists again struck the United States. Only this time, it was a case of homegrown terrorism. The target was the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

NEWS REPORT: “It was an explosion, blowing off the entire north face of that building.”

The bombing killed one hundred sixty-eight people. It was the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil, up to that time.

The man behind the attack was Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier who hated the government. He was captured soon after the explosion. McVeigh was tried and, in two thousand one, executed for his crimes. A friend of his, another military veteran, was also involved in the plot and was sent to prison.