The U.S. was no stranger to terror attacks before Sept. 11, 2001, both at home and abroad, but none shaped America and the world quite like the attacks on 9/11, which occurred 25 years ago Friday.
The Sept 11 attacks – in which 19 Islamic terrorists hiijacked four U.S. commercial planes, crashing them into both twin towers in New York City, the Pentagon and a Shanksville, Pennsylvania, field after passengers overtook the hijackers – caused the deaths of 2,996 people, including the terrorists.
Between the 1960s and 1970s, a leftist group, the Weather Underground, terrorized the U.S. government agencies, claiming credit for 25 bombings, including explosions at the U.S. State Department, U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, the California Attorney General’s office and a New York City police station. No innocent people were killed in the attacks, while three of their members were killed in an accidental explosion in a New York City townhouse in 1970.
The 1980s saw a major uptick in Islamic-inspired terror attacks targeting Americans overseas, setting their sights on air travel, especially.
During the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah, a terror proxy of Iran, was responsible for the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people and injuring 120.
The same year, the Marine Barracks in Beirut was attacked on Oct. 23, killing 242 and injuring 60 Americans. Up until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Marine Barracks bombing stood as the deadliest terror attack against the U.S., and the deadliest single-death toll for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima during World War II in 1945.
A TWA flight flying from Rome to Athens was hijacked by two Hezbollah terrorists on June 14, 1985. One American hostage, a U.S. Navy sailor, Second Class Petty Officer Robert Stethem, was murdered.
A few years later, on April 14, 1988, a car-bomb exploded outside a USO club in Naples, Italy, killing one U.S. sailor, Third Class Petty Officer Angela Simone Santos, and injuring four other American sailors. The group, Jihad Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the U.S. Department of State.