World Trade Center Building 7

By Cody Parrott: On September 11th, 2001, three steel frame high rises collapsed for the first time in history.

The third building was 47 stories high, burning with visible fires over multiple floors, collapsing in classic explosive demolition style. It only took 6.5 seconds for World Trade Center Building No. 7. to collapse. The floors above encountered no resistance from the floors below which had already been 'pulled' - as the demolitions term goes - into its own footprint.

As Dan Rather described it at 5:30 PM EST on 9/11/01: "Amazing. Incredible... pick your word. For the third time today, it is all too reminiscent of a building that was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down."

Larry Silverstein had leased the World Trade Center on 7/24/01 and would later win $4.5 billion dollars in damages from insurers of Buildings 1 through 7.

In the PBS documentary "America Rebuilds," which aired in 2002, Silverstein is quoted, on camera: "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'Ya know, we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it,' and they made that decision to pull - then we watched the building collapse."

I intend no harm and I draw no conclusions, and I mourn 9/11 as a tragedy every bit as much as you. But friends, I fear we cannot mourn this tragedy properly until we understand what happened on September 11th, 2001, when the twenty-first century was so quickly born and so lustily cast into the crimson patina of war.