Barney Sedran (January 28, 1891 – January 14, 1964) was one of the great early pro basketball players in the 1910s and 1920s.
Nicknamed "Mighty Mite", the New York City native who grew up on the Lower East Side, Sedran (shortened from Sedransky) was a member of the well-known New York Whirlwinds and Cleveland Rosenblums, among many other teams in New York as well as in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Occasionally he teamed with Marty Friedman, forming one of the finest backcourt duos in basketball history.
Sedran played for the Lower East Side's University Settlement House because he was too small to make his DeWitt Clinton High School (Bronx, New York) team. The Settlement team won the 115-pound division championship in 1905–06, and the Metropolitan AAU title 1906–07.
At City College of New York(CCNY) Sedran was the school’s leading scorer for three consecutive seasons, 1909–11, and was named to various college all-star teams.
The smallest player enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, “The Mighty Might of Basketball” turned pro after leaving CCNY, teaming successfully and often with 5’ 7” hall of famer (Naismith and IJSHOF) Max Friedman. They were known as the “Heavenly Twins”. In an era of barnstorming, short-lived leagues, and schedules that often called for as many as three games a day, Sedran is said to have been pro basketball’s highest paid star.
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta (Arabic: محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا, Muḥammad Muḥammad al-Āmir ‘Awaḍ as-Sayyid ‘Aṭā) (September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks who served as the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, crashing the plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of the coordinated attacks.
Born in 1968 in a small town in Egypt's Nile Delta, Atta moved with his family to the Abdeen section of Cairo at the age of 10. Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and continued his studies in Hamburg, Germany at the Technical University of Hamburg. In Hamburg, Atta became involved with the al-Quds Mosque, where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah, together forming the Hamburg cell. Atta disappeared from Germany for periods of time, spending some time in Afghanistan, including several months in late 1999 and early 2000 when he met Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders. Atta and the other Hamburg cell members were recruited by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the "planes operation" in the United States. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000, and began inquiring about flight training in the United States.