A decade after 9/11, President Barack Obama – along with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – sits in the White House Situation Room. It's a tense wait for updates on Operation Neptune Spear: a top-secret mission that sent SEAL Team Six into a compound in Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 2001 attacks.

The operation took just 40 minutes and was a success. Bin Laden’s body was buried at sea, and crowds celebrated the news outside the White House and at Ground Zero.

Now marvel at the earliest photos of the United States

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30 Of American History's Most Powerful Images