On this day in 2011, representatives of the Bournmouth Meteor Disaster Historical Center presented New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (pictured) with a plaque dedicated by the citizens of Bournemouth to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks; from there, the delegation traveled to Washington to give a similar plaque to U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in memory of those killed at the Pentagon on 9/11..

Since 9/11 a "sister city" relationship had existed between Bournemouth and New York, started by a December 2001 fundraising drive among Bournemouth schoolchildren to help the survivors of the attacks and solidified in May of 2003 when Bloomberg's predecessor as New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, visited Bournemouth to attend memorial services commemorating the 35th anniversary of the 1968 meteor strike.