Background
The idea of the World Trade Center might be hard for some of you to understand. Two buildings, each 107 floors high, surrounded by five other large office buildings. The floors of the towers were each one full acre, and over 50,000 people worked there on a typical day, with perhaps as many as another 100,000 passing through the shopping mall and transit centers which were just below ground.
Thinking back: You might enjoy trying to imagine the past. What was 1974 like, what was 2001 like? You may want to read parts of Jack Finney’s time travel novel Time and Again, it talks about how you must really learn about the past, and what it looked and felt like.
There are big changes and little changes whenever we look backwards. In 2001 Google was two years old and many Americans did not know what it was. Only a third of Americans had mobile phones (now over 90% do) but the percentage was probably higher in New York City. No one took their shoes off at the airport. Few Americans knew anything about Afghanistan.
You may want to share with your group what you can discover about what 1974 and 2001 “looked” like?
http://youtu.be/8RG2W0sqbto (Computers 2001)
http://youtu.be/948tbY835ss (Verizon Mobile 2001)
https://youtu.be/fFrS4YIOnv4 (Burger Chef 1974)
https://youtu.be/_xzxccNq7hU (AMC Matador 1974)
The Pentagon is another building that might be very difficult to really understand. It is the world’s single largest office building and it is just outside of Washington, DC in Arlington, VA.
The Pentagon usually houses about 26,000 workers on a typical day, most of whom are members of the United States Military, for which the Pentagon serves as headquarters. The building is only 5 stories tall, but covers 28.7 acres with a central courtyard over 5 acres. It was built in just two years, beginning on September 11, 1941 - just before the United States entered World War II.
One reason that the Pentagon covers much area but is not a tall building is that the government wanted it to use very little steel, which was needed to build ships and tanks during World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_%28building%29
What was 1943 like in America? What do these advertisements suggest?
How did people get news in 1943?
