Talking of acts that taint the world, here's one remembered yesterday:
Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was called to describe how he heard of the attacks. He said he was unwilling to believe the horror until he saw people jumping from the twin towers. "I froze. I realised in that couple of seconds, it switched my thinking and emotions. I said, 'We're in uncharted territory.'In the days that followed there were others who had less of a problem with these images. They 'understood'."As I looked up, my eyes caught on a man on the 100th floor of the north tower near the top. I realised I was watching the man throwing himself out. I watched him go all the way down and hit."
Mr Giuliani used a model of the towers to describe the attacks and said he has never been able to erase the images from his mind: a man clutching his briefcase case as he fell; a woman holding her skirt down to protect her modesty during her 1,000ft plunge.
"Over the course of time I saw several other people jumping, I can't remember how many. Two of them I saw were holding hands. Of the many memories that stick in your mind from that day, that's the one I remember every day."
"It was horrid," he said of the scenes after the twin towers collapsed. "The worst thing I've ever seen in my whole life... parts of human bodies... hands or legs."