The 52 people who died came from all over the world but had all made their lives in or near London. Their ages ranged from 20 to 60. The average age was 34. Thirty-two were British. Three were Polish. One person each came from Afghanistan, France, Ghana, Grenada, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. One was a Vietnamese-born Australian; another held dual American-Vietnamese citizenship. Seven died in the tunnel between Liverpool Street and Aldgate. Six died between Paddington and Edgware Road. Twenty-six died in the deep tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square - the worst-affected blast because the narrow Piccadilly line tube concentrated the explosive force. Thirteen died on the bus at Tavistock Square. They had been commuters, students, tourists. Among them were nurses, engineers, finance workers, a hairdresser, a Royal Mail employee, two friends meeting for breakfast. They were ordinary travelers on an ordinary Thursday morning.

Between the train bombs at 8:49 and the bus bomb at 9:47, the city tried to understand what was happening. Initial reports suggested a power surge had caused explosions in the Underground's electrical circuits. London Underground itself believed this at first, which is why a code amber alert was not declared until 9:19. Passengers walked along the tracks in the dark. Stations were evacuated. Bus services tried to absorb tens of thousands of stranded commuters. The fourth bomber, Hasib Hussain, had been part of the original plan to attack the Underground. His device failed to detonate on the Northern Line; he then boarded a number 30 bus at Marble Arch and waited. The bus had picked up Underground passengers fleeing the tube. When the bomb went off in Tavistock Square it killed thirteen people on the upper deck. Witnesses later described "papers and half a bus flying through the air." Among the immediate responders were doctors leaving BMA House, the British Medical Association headquarters next door.

Investigators identified the four attackers within days. Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, the ringleader, worked as a learning mentor at a primary school in Beeston, Leeds, where he lived with his wife and young child. He detonated the Edgware Road bomb. Shehzad Tanweer, 22, also of Beeston, sometimes worked in his parents' fish-and-chip shop. He detonated the Aldgate bomb. Germaine Lindsay, 19, lived in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, with his pregnant wife and young son. He detonated the King's Cross-Russell Square bomb. Hasib Hussain, 18, lived with his brother and sister-in-law in Leeds. He detonated the Tavistock Square bus bomb. Three of them were British-born sons of Pakistani immigrants; Lindsay was a convert born in Jamaica. They had assembled their bombs from concentrated hydrogen peroxide and pepper, packed into rucksacks. None had previously been on any security service's radar - Home Secretary Charles Clarke called them "cleanskins." CCTV captured them arriving together at King's Cross station at 8:24 a.m., hugging briefly before splitting up to board their trains.

Within hours of the bombings, Muslim faith groups across Britain condemned the attacks. Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain said the perpetrators were not true Muslims because their acts were contrary to Islamic teachings. On 18 July, more than 500 British Muslim religious leaders issued a fatwa formally condemning the bombings and stating that they were against the teachings of Islam. Senior Muslim leaders met the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and the Met Police Commissioner. In the aftermath, anti-Muslim hate crimes spiked - mosques were attacked, Sikh temples were attacked by people unable to tell the difference. A British Medical Journal study found 61 percent of Muslim commuters in London suffered substantial stress in the following days. A YouGov poll showed 88 percent of British Muslims rejected the bombings; six percent justified them. The contradictions of the moment - solidarity, fear, suspicion, defiance - all played out at once. Two weeks later, a second wave of attempted attacks failed to detonate. A day after that, police shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, at Stockwell tube station after misidentifying him as one of the failed bombers. His family is still seeking accountability.

Most of the Underground reopened the following morning. Some commuters stayed home. Most did not. The Circle Line stayed closed until 4 August. King's Cross St Pancras tube remained restricted to Metropolitan line trains for a week. The damaged trains were removed in stages over the following month. The FTSE 100 dropped 200 points in the two hours after the first attack - its biggest fall since the invasion of Iraq - then recovered by close of trading; by the following day it was above its pre-attack level. Memorials now mark each of the four bombing sites. In Hyde Park, fifty-two steel pillars stand in a clearing, one for each victim, arranged in four interlinked clusters representing the four attack sites. The names are inscribed on a plaque at one end. The 7/7 bombings became part of the language of British public life - shorthand for that morning, that hour, that response. The number 30 bus still runs from Marble Arch through Tavistock Square. The Piccadilly Line still runs from King's Cross to Russell Square. London continued. It is what London does.