Editor's note: The U.S. woke up Tuesday to an unprecedented terrorist attack. Normally tuned in to the sports world, ESPN.com correspondents from around the country and the world turned their attention to the drama unfolding before our eyes.

New York City
Jon Scher is senior editor of ESPNMAG.com.

My apartment is on West 82nd Street in Manhattan, about five or six miles north of the World Trade Center. As I was about to walk out the door at 9 a.m., I turned back to the television to get the headlines from MSNBC. The anchors broke in with news that a plane had crashed into the WTC. They were making comparisons to the 1945 plane crash into the Empire State Building -- an accident. But given the geography of Lower Manhattan, that made no sense -- there's plenty of water around to ditch a crippled plane, and the weather today is crystal clear.

I watched for a while, waiting to see if the downtown subways would keep running -- it sounds mundane right now, but I didn't want to get stuck in a tunnel. I was watching on TV when the second plane hit the WTC -- I thought it was the worst thing I had ever seen, until the towers fell.

As the news got worse and worse, I went up to the roof of my five-story building. On July 4, you can see the top of the downtown fireworks from this rooftop, but I couldn't see the plume of smoke. I could smell it, though -- I can smell it from where I sit right now, inside my apartment, with a north-facing open window across the room -- a slightly sweet-acrid smell. On a normal day I'd wonder if there was a house fire in the neighborhood.

I tried to call the office, but there was no dial tone. The cell phone works off and on. I spoke with Andy Latack, our senior researcher, who was gathered with the magazine staff in front of the hanging TVs on the seventh floor of our 34th Street offices. We both remarked that we weren't feeling good about the fact that the Mag office is diagonally across Fifth Avenue from the Empire State Building. (We all walk by or through the ESB every day, and the lack of conspicuous security at street level is remarkable.) A few minutes later, I understand that the Mag staff was evacuated to another Disney office, at 39th Street and Third Avenue. I spoke to Andy again, and he says everyone seems to be fine.

Across the street from my building, a crew of window washers had been going about their jobs this morning, pretty much at eye level. When I looked again, they weren't working at all -- they were watching someone's TV, through the window. Now they're gone.

I hear sirens in the distance. An hour ago helicopters were buzzing everywhere, but right now there's absolutely no air traffic in the sky -- nothing but the pigeons. The sunlight seems dimmer than normal, like it does during an eclipse. I'm not usually home at this time of day, but I can see the corner of Columbus and 82nd, and there seems to be almost no one on the street. The police station next door hasn't had time to pull its flag down to half mast.

Seattle
Jim Caple is a senior writer with ESPN.com.

My wife was sitting on a plane at Seattle's Sea-Tac airport early Tuesday morning. Just as it was about to pull away from the gate, the pilot announced there was an incident, and the flight would be delayed. A few minutes later he announced the flight was cancelled and passengers were to de-plane.

I was sleeping at home when my wife called a little later from the airport. "There have been terrorist attacks and all flights are cancelled," she said. "A plane crashed into the World Trade Center and another crashed into the Pentagon."

I understood the words, but they didn't register. I turned on the TV and watched the news reports, feeling as if it were all a nightmare that eventually would end with my awakening. I still have that feeling.

Undoubtedly Americans felt the same all across the country as every city watched and responded.

During a Millennium terrorist scare on New Year's Eve two years ago, Seattle officials closed the Space Needle. They did so again Tuesday, as well as the Columbia Tower, the city's tallest building. The Smith Tower also closed. Sea-Tac closed. State ferries shut down service. Several businesses closed.

Pike Place Market is the soul of Seattle, where more than 100 merchants sell everything from fresh salmon and berries to fine champagne and gourmet kitchenware. On many afternoons during this summer, you can walk past the many produce tables and follow the Mariners game broadcast from radio to radio.

The shops, merchants and tourists were there as usual Tuesday, but instead of the Mariners game, the radios played news reports of the terrorists attacks in New York and Washington.

"There's nothing normal today," Lisa Butterfield said while listening to the news outside Beringer's Farms berry stand and restaurant.

It will take a long time before anything feels normal again.

Atlanta
Jeff Merron is a former editor at SportsJones.com and an ESPN.com correspondent.

At 9:15 a.m., my wife, Jackie Quay, and mother-in-law, Betty Quay, were waiting to check Betty in to a 9:40 flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia when they heard the news.

"A woman came up behind us and said to the group of people standing there, 'Did you hear what happened? Two commercial planes crashed into the World Center,' " Jackis said.

A short time later, Delta announced that the northeast corridor was closed to air traffic and that the Atlanta-Philadelphia flight was cancelled.

"My mother was going to wait at the airport and see if she could get a later flight, and I was going to head into work in Atlanta," Jackie said. "But as I was leaving the airport, I saw on an airport bar TV that the Pentagon had been bombed. Then I knew she wouldn't be getting a flight out today."

Jackie said that there was no panic at the airport, but that she overheard conversations of expressing shock that so many planes were hijacked.

"People were lined up trying to get out of the airport -- trying to get rental cars. People were on all the phones. But there was no announcement that the airport was shut down. We didn't hear that until we were driving home from the airport."

Jackie added that news crews were arriving at the airport at around 10:30 a.m., and that all of the television monitors in the airport terminals, usually tuned in to CNN Airport News, were shut off by 9:30 a.m., right after Bush was shown speaking to the nation.

London
Chris Borg is an editor with SoccerNet.com in London.

In the UK, both the Queen and Prime Minister Tony Blair have expressed their shock at the atrocities that have taken place in the United States.

Their sentiments have reflected their general sense of horror at what has happened -- people have watched coverage of events unfolding with increasing disbelief and distress. The scale of destruction is terrifying.

The London Stock Exchange was closed this afternoon, and Canary Wharf, Britain's tallest building, was evacuated soon after the World Trade Center attacks.

In London there is a sense of somberness and a realization that something so nightmarish could happen anywhere at any time.

Earlier, European football's governing body UEFA confirmed that tonight's Champions League, including matches involving English clubs Liverpool and Arsenal, would go ahead as scheduled.

Buenos Aires
Diego Zorrilla is a senior editor with ESPNdeportes.com based in Argentina.

Shock. Indignation. Fear. And the terrific, yet too familiar sensation of watching a horror movie come true again, although thousands of miles away this time.

The reaction in Argentina to the series of terrorist attacks against the United States bore no differences to what happened around the world, but it did bring back painful memories. Two similar catastrophes took place not so long ago in Buenos Aires, and both still remain unsolved: The bombings of the Israeli embassy in 1992 and of a Jewish community building in 1994, which left 107 people dead.

Tuesday, people were heading for, or had justed arrived in, their workplaces when news of the attack broke. Commuters jammed around TV sets in railway stations, co-workers exchanged e-mails with the latest updates, and those with relatives or friends in any U.S. city tried, mostly without success, to establish a phone connection with the States.

Fearing a coordinated attack aimed at several simultaneous objectives could have Argentina again as one of the targets, the country went into red-code alert immediately: Security was tightened around potential targets, and embassies swiftly were evacuated, as were all buildings serving as headquarters for American or Jewish interests in the country.

Buenos Aires, the capital city where nearly half the country's population lives, went into a state of schizophrenia on Tuesday: While traffic jams became a common scene and many people hurried to and fro, there was a silent majority who preferred to remain still.

With evacuations and pre-emptive security measures came chaos, and as streets were closed and police surrounded vital spots, thousands of drivers were trapped, whether they were heading home or trying to find a route to their workplaces.

But at the same time, many people chose to remain at home or in their offices, glued to their TV screens, radios or computer monitors in search for more information about the tragedy, but also fearing that the already-proved vulnerability of Buenos Aires would make it too dangerous to venture out.

With its sad history -- already having been the victim of fundamentalist attacks and home to the second largest Jewish community outside of Israel -- Argentina condemned and mourned the attacks. But at the same time the country wondered if, as in the past, it won't become a battleground in a war that will do nothing but escalate.