Just before President Barack Obama announced to the world late Sunday that bin Laden was dead, a crowd began to form outside the White House gates.
A chant of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" filled the night air, and the quickly growing group spontaneously broke into an off-key rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
"I was in D.C. during 9/11," said Mason Wright, 33, who recalled his days as a student at American University watching a second plane hit the World Trade Center in 2001. "It's hard to believe 10 years later, it's over."
"It's terrible to sit here and celebrate someone's death, but to the thousands of lives that were lost -- it's finally come to an end," he added.
Alan Comar, 29, worked as a contractor in Afghanistan. He clutched his girlfriend as he watched hundreds clad in red, white and blue gather in front of the White House.
Big crowds cheer at White House 
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Dustin Swensson, who recently served in Iraq, echoed those comments, calling the news "historic."
"It's what the world needed," he said as he celebrated outside the White House gates. "(I'll) always remember where I was when the towers went down and I'm always going to remember where I am now."
In New York, a cheering crowd gathered at Ground Zero -- the site where the twin towers once stood. Strains of "God Bless America" could be heard intermittently trickling through the crowd.
One former New York firefighter -- forced to retire due to lung ailments suffered as a result of the dust from Ground Zero -- said he was there to let the 343 firefighters who died in the attacks know "they didn't die in vain."
"It's a war that I feel we just won," he said. "I'm down here to let them know that justice has been served."
Bob Gibson, a retired New York police officer, said the news of bin Laden's death gave him a sense of "closure."
"I never thought this night would come that we would capture or kill bin Laden," he said. "And thank the Lord he has been eliminated."
Private moments of reflection were happening, too, as loved ones of those killed in the September, 11, 2001, attacks quietly marked bin Laden's death.
Patricia Sliwak-Grinberg's brother, Robert Sliwak, a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee who died in the World Trade Center, said she began to cry when Obama began to describe the day of the attacks.
"I guess I'm happy," she said. "You want to be happy but it's such a sad reason to be happy. ... You think of all those families and all those people who were sucked into this, when one person could be doing so much evil."
She likened the feeling to "what people feel like when someone has been killed and they finally capture or kill the person who did it."
"It's so odd because everyone puts you in this whole collective group, but you're still just one person who lost a brother," she said.
Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy, was killed on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, expressed "relief."
In an email to CNN, she said: "Cannot express how this feels to my family, but relief is one word. We hope we can now focus on all that that madman took, namely nearly 3,000 + innocent victims, and not on him."
Gordon Felt, president of the Families of Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11, said that while the news could not "ease our pain, or bring back our loved ones, it does bring a measure of comfort that the mastermind of the September 11th tragedy and the face of global terror can no longer spread his evil."
Elsewhere, spontaneous celebrations broke out on college campuses from Vermont to Delaware.
CNN iReporter Chris Lemke, a media studies student at Penn State, said he has two finals later Monday, but chose to forgo studying to participate in the jubilation.
"It's just crazy," he said, adding that people began to gather on campus around 11 p.m. Sunday as word spread among late-night studiers by cell phone. Crowds listened to Obama's address from a TV blasting out an apartment window.
Steve Rossero, a sophomore at Penn State, said he looked over his balcony and saw masses of students chanting and screaming following Obama's speech.
"It sparked patriotism in everyone, I think," he said.
Rossero, whose brother is in the military, said the news particularly hit home for him, but he said the feeling was shared by everyone celebrating.
"Just being American tonight, it's a great feeling."
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