Last week I found myself on more than one occasion bringing up in conversation the 1993 failed attempt to destroy the World Trade Center. While the bomb went off beneath the North Tower, the explosion failed to bring the structure, and its twin, down as intended. Six people died and more than a thousand were injured in the attack.

As I told my students last week, in the 1993 attack investigators were able to identify and apprehend most of the conspirators when one of their number, Mohammed Salameh, returned to a Jersey City, NJ, Ryder truck rental office to try to recover the deposit he had put down on the truck which carried the bomb. That led to his arrest, and then to the others.

Twenty-four years ago this week, one of the primary conspirators in that effort, the Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman was sentenced to life in prison for his part in the plot. The attack on the WTC was only part of the holy war that he had intended to help launch.

In October 1995, Rahman, along with nine others, was convicted of a broad conspiracy to carry out a “day of terror” across New York City, five bombs that were intended to destroy the United Nations headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and 26 Federal Plaza, the US government’s main office building in the city. The evidence in the trial included testimony from a government informant, secret audio recordings, and a video tape showing defendants mixing diesel oil and ammonium nitrate fertilizer in a Queens, NY, garage, ingredients that were to make up one of the bombs.

So with that quick bit of added background, here’s this week’s look back.

• Jan. 13, 2015 — Volnovakha, Ukraine: Assailants fire a rocket-propelled grenade into a civilian bus near a military checkpoint, killing 12 and injuring another 11. The attack is attributed to militants of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
• Jan. 16, 1981 — Coalisland, Northern Ireland: Members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a loyalist paramilitary group, carry out a failed assassination attempt on Catholic civil rights activist and Member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband. Both are wounded in the attack, which took place in the family’s home while it was under surveillance by British soldiers. The troops did not intervene to prevent the attack, and waited more than 30 minutes before summoning ambulances to the scene.
• Jan. 17, 1996 — United States: Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the “Blind Sheihk,” is sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. He died in prison in February 2017 at the age of 78.
• Jan. 17, 2002 — Spain: ETA militants send a mail bomb to Enrique Ibarra, vice president of Grupo Correo in the Basque region of Spain. No one is injured in the attack.
• Jan. 19, 1977 — New York City: Members of a Puerto Rican separatist group called the Independent Armed Revolutionary Commandos carry out a firebomb attack on an FBI office. This was one of four separate attacks in New York City carried out by the group on the same day.