by Kerry Maxwell with recordings by speechinaction - listening and pronunciation online
‘From emptied subway systems to deserted parliaments and shopping malls, the countries of central and south-eastern Europe have been edgy and anxious since 7/7 ...’ (The Guardian, 28th July 2005) ‘… They ask how many 9/11s and 7/7s it will take for the West to realise that fighting terrorism is not targeting only Al Qaeda.’ (Khaleej Times, 26th July 2005) On Thursday 7th July 2005, the day after London had been chosen to host the 2012 Olympics and the first full day of the G8 summit, a series of four bomb attacks struck London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour. The deadliest bombing in London since the Second World War, within just a few hours this horrific event was being referred to by the world’s media as 7/7. 7/7 consisted of four bomb explosions, three on the London underground and one on a bus in Tavistock Square. The bombings claimed the lives of 52 people, and the four suspected bombers, and 700 others were injured. 7/7 represents the deadliest act of terrorism in the United Kingdom since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, which killed 270 people. The expression 7/7 has quickly become a universally understood reference to these tragic events, commonly occurring as a noun modifier as in 7/7 attacks/bombings. Amidst speculation about the continuing war against terrorism, it is also now used countably, as illustrated in the second citation above. Along with 9/11s (see below), here it refers not just to the specific date of the tragedy, but to the eventuality of further terrorist bombings. Background Use of the term 7/7 to refer to the bombings on July 7th 2005 is modelled on the term 9/11, a universally understood representation of the tragic events of September 11th 2001, when four commercial airliners were hijacked by terrorists in the US. Two of the planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and another hit the Pentagon, with more than 3000 people losing their lives. Voted word of the year in 2001 by the American Dialect Society, 9/11 entered the US and international lexicon practically overnight, immediately understood even in Canada, Australia and Britain, where 9/11 conventionally means November 9th, rather than September 11th. The date/month ambiguity in 7/7 means that there is no such potential confusion. However, the subsequent bombings which occurred in London on 21st July 2005, but did not cause injury or fatalities, have been referred to by the world’s media as both 21/7 and 7/21, reflecting date conventions on both sides of the Atlantic.
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