Tragic events like 9/11 will forever be seared into our memories

Opinion: I remember exactly where I was when the first plane hit the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.

It was a Tuesday around 11pm AEST. I was in bed watching a documentary called When We Were Kings about the Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

The broadcast was interrupted by a news flash saying that an American Airlines flight had flown into the North Tower of the WTC. At that time, it was assumed to be some kind of tragic accident.

I can’t remember what I had for lunch two days ago but I can recall that night 25 years ago as clearly as if it had happened this morning.

I can also tell you where I was when Princess Diana died in 1997 (leaving an Italian restaurant in Sydney’s Leichhardt), the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 (at a motel in Umina on the NSW Central Coast) and the Bondi massacre in December 2025 (watching Tipping Point: Celebrity Edition).

Obviously, I’m not alone in this.

Most of us can recount where they were when a huge natural catastrophe happened or an event of monumental historical significance.

Sometimes even down to what they were wearing and what the weather was.

Why are these things seared in our memory so sharply when, for the most part, they haven’t impacted us directly?

They may certainly have had a profound impact on us emotionally but our lives rolled on uninterrupted immediately after the event.

We went to work, went to bed, picked up the kids from school. Life went on.

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It’s actually a studied phenomenon called Flashbulb Memory, coined by researchers Roger Brown and James Kulik in 1977.

Its definition is as simple as you’d think: a vivid, long-lasting memory about a dramatic, unexpected or shocking event.

This, of course, also applies to incredibly personal events like the birth of a child, death of a parent or other big family or work milestones.

Brown and Kulik argued that events which are sufficiently surprising and significant trigger the brain to create a “permanent record” of the event in your memory compared to memories of less impact that may fade over time.

But flashbulb memories may not be as permanent and reliable as you might think.

A study in the US launched straight after 9/11 found that three years after the event, there were dramatic inconsistencies in what people had initially described.

Things like who they were with and how they found out about it.

Many people who at first said they had learned of the tragedy from a friend were later saying they saw it live on TV.

The 10-year study led by William Hirst at the National Institutes of Health put this down to repeated exposure to TV replays of the attack in the days and weeks following and on anniversaries.

And once a memory has been altered, it gets repeated with a stubborn confidence that shocks the individual once the discrepancy is pointed out to them.

So, maybe I didn’t have Italian the day Diana died. Maybe it was Thai.

But I’m sticking to my story and that’s what it comes down to.

My story of where I was and what I felt on a day I won’t forget.