Remembering 9/11 20 years later: LIVE UPDATES

While 9/11 ripped so many loved ones apart, it brought Houston couple Nick and Diane Marson together in the strangest way. 

The pair were flying separately on a U.S.-bound international flight on Sept. 11, 2001, when their plane was diverted to New Foundland, Canada, following the attacks and after U.S. airspace had closed, according to FOX 26 Houston. 

"I noticed the flight attendant was extremely nervous and almost visibly shaking and I thought she’s really not cut out for this job," Nick, 73, told the station. "Little did I realize she was probably walking around the plane looking for other people that might have been terrorists." 

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Queen Elizabeth II marked 20 years since the 9/11 attacks by offering her sympathies to the victims, survivors and families affected by the atrocity.

In a message to U.S. President Joe Biden, the British monarch remembered the “terrible attacks" on New York and Washington, D.C.

“My thoughts and prayers — and those of my family and the entire nation — remain with the victims, survivors and families affected, as well as the first responders and rescue workers called to duty,’’ she said.

“My visit to the site of the World Trade Center in 2010 is held fast in my memory. It reminds me that as we honor those from many nations, faiths and backgrounds who lost their lives, we also pay tribute to the resilience and determination of the communities who joined together to rebuild.''

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also remembered the attacks, issuing a statement ahead of the anniversary saying that the terrorists had failed to “shake our belief in freedom and democracy."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lanterns are carried during a candlelight memorial to the passengers and crew of United Flight 93, at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa, at sunset on Friday, Sept. 10, 2021, as the nation prepares to mark 20 years since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Hundreds of people lined the road to the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Friday night as 40 people carried lanterns, representing the passengers and crew who defeated the terrorist hijackers on the plane before it went down in a field, according to a report.

The luminaria ceremony is a yearly tradition at the memorial but had weighted significance after 20 years since the 9/11.

“We need this,” Gordon Felt, who lost his brother on the flight that day, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Our country and the world needs places like the Flight 93 National Memorial because it reminds us of who we are, who we became and perhaps who we could once again become — a healing.” 

In a video released Friday, President Biden reflected on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in America, insisting that "national unity" is America's "greatest strength."

Biden opened the video by discussing his friend Davis, whom Biden said he "grew up with in Delaware."

"On this day, 20 years ago, he and his family had just passed the first year without their youngest of three sons, Teddy, who died in a boating accident at age 15," Biden said as he began to describe one family's horror on that day.

"His eldest son, Davis Jr., was just six days into a new job on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center."

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A beam of light is visible from the Washington Monument, the day before the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as part of the Towers of Light Tribute near the Pentagon, Friday Sept. 10, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The U.S. is set to mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Saturday with commemorations at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The milestone anniversary takes place just weeks after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban, the faction that sheltered the Muslim militant group founded by Osama bin Laden that carried out the attacks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.