Actually the article says that little details like the order of events or where the president was where the parts that folks get wrong. It’s not like I’m going to forget or incorrectly remember that I was in a class at school when it happened and we tuned in live to a TV in a classroom next door that happened to have cable. And how everyone assumed for the first hour or so that it was just this tragic, tragic accident. Now if you asked me, who was I with, or what did I do later that day, or who was the first person I spoke to... well, that’s where I might have false memories. I “know” I called my parents and was emotionally shaken for weeks after, scared (sometimes even now) of working in really tall buildings or those that might be a target, and that even now, I’m less likely to suggest or hold meetings on Sept 11, as conversationally I know it will distract folks. Whether my memories are 56% accurate or 86% accurate doesn’t matter that much, I know how I felt and that’s what counts. :)

Why would your teachers interrupt class to show you some banal accident? This seems to have happened a lot, according to the comments here. Why on earth would you stop class to show the kids something on TV, ever? Would it not make sense to either send them home due to security concerns, or just finish the school day and let them find out the news later?

Finish the school day? In Eastern US time zone, it was in the morning, and actually started just before class, near the start of the day. Folks had arrived early, somebody heard about it from somebody else and rushed to get a TV so we could watch it live. At the time, it wasn’t entirely determined to be a “banal accident”, it was, well, it was live news more than anything. Everyone was glued to the screen as folks were trying to figure out what was going on. There were reports of a plane off course, and frankly what ran through some people’s minds were, “are we next?” The cellphone grid was strained to capacity not just in New York but just about everywhere, there was this palpable sense that the world had changed in some kind of fundamental way. It hadn’t, not really, but it was a shock.

You know on movies where they show the world ending, or devastation or even the atomic bomb’s aftermath, etc. It was that kind of “I can’t stop watching,” going on, where you know the likelihood it will affect your life directly in a negative way is pretty low, but you want to know more, see what happens next, or if it will affect you too.

It’s maybe a bit different now — we’re overwhelmed with so many information sources that... it’s possible the modern day equivalent is all being on the same Reddit thread or Twitter feed or live stream of an event.

Generally classrooms are meant to be a mixture of real events and things you can learn from them. If I recall correctly, this was an art class, or maybe an English class, but a humanities class of some kind, and so part of the activity was actually meant for conversation afterward. But... it unfolded in a much more dramatic way, and ... I think had there been more evidence that it was a criminal act from the start, we might not have—-ah, well, the use of airplanes as weapons was entirely new. What can I say, it sounds like any other event now, and somehow less shocking than people using IEDs, vehicular homicide, mass shootings or unjust violence, but... it unfolding live in the largest city in the world, the centre of finance, it... was still a horrendous act. The tragedy was only made worse by what followed in “revenge” and the changes to laws that we still live under today. I remember thinking a year previously that there’s no way 1984 could happen as I’d read it, and then I re-read it around a decade later and discovered it had already happened, partly thanks to Prism and other intelligence agency sharing agreements we’d been living under for years. The biggest shame is that folks knew about it in advance and yet we didn’t even have safely locked cockpit doors at the time. Who would have thought that hijackers wouldn’t simply want to send the plane somewhere else but to...

It's more that I'm surprised the school would let news take over their schedule. If a tower in NYC is on fire, that doesn't seem to be enough to justify it. When the second plane hits, sure. But even then, if you live far from NYC, why make the kids watch that? I mean are there other events that your teachers would make you watch?

Actually, the article you linked proves that it is true.

In recalling where they were when they learned of the attack, people were 89 percent accurate at survey two and 83 percent accurate at survey three.

So the statement nearly every American remembers where they were is TRUE.

The survey shows that more minute details get lost over time, such as who they were with/ how they learned about it. But I'm pretty sure thats the case with human memory in general.

I was sitting at the kitchen table reading a Usenet group on my ThinkPad. I saw a headline: "WTC?"

I thought to myself, "WTF? That must be what they meant and they misspelled it."

Then I turned on the TV and saw the rest.

Where were you?

Even in Poland they showed it, I was watching something random wiser and suddenly this. First I though this was some action movie, then the news ticker that was correct and accurate hit me. That's when the second plane hit, and then later the towers collapsed.

I was knocking a hole in a wall to install some windows that day.

I was told "some boys flew a plane into the twin towers"

I imagined American teens in a 2 seater Cessna. The truth was unimaginable.

I appreciate this detail, but your tone is confusing.