If you are old enough to remember what you were doing on August 31, 1997, and have even a passing interest in the royal family or pop culture, you will remember every detail of the moment you learned that Princess Diana was injured in a car accident in Paris (as originally reported) and later reported to have died (the author I remember everything). (Few of us actually knew Princess Diana, but this most famous woman in the world was part of our cultural vocabulary, appearing on magazine covers and news programs around the world. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, at the age of only 36, she passed away.

As PEOPLE magazine succinctly put it, "Princess Diana's tragic death sent the world into a whirlwind of grief. This Wednesday marks 25 years since the accident, which also claimed the lives of Diana's companion, Dodi Al-Fayed, and her driver, Henri Paul. Ingrid Sward, Princess Diana's biographer, who knew Princess Diana personally, told PEOPLE: "Everyone was affected. Everyone was affected. Almost everyone in the world remembers where they were that day.

Mourners flocked to Princess Diana's London home, Kensington Palace, and other royal residences, including Buckingham Palace and St. James's Palace, to offer flowers, notes, and photos and express their grief at the loss of Princess Diana.

"It was a heartbreaking moment," says Sward. 'There have been few moments like this in history.'

Ed Perkins, director of the recently released documentary about Princess Diana, "The Princess," says, "This was and continues to be the story of someone who was able to make a difference in people's lives. There was a person with whom people could project their own hopes, dreams, and fears and find a strangely personal connection. It was only after she was gone that many people realized what they had lost."

Diana lives on through her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, who were 15 and 12 at the time of the accident and are now 40 and 37. In the documentary film "Diana, Our Mother," Harry says, "It was very, very strange to see the outpouring of love and emotion from so many people I had never met after her death."

Diana's former bodyguard, Ken Whorf, called William "the living embodiment of my mother," and Harry called himself "my mother's son" and said he tried to honor Diana in everything he did. And who could forget the heartbreak of seeing the events of August 31 burned in his mind, as well as the sight of his sons walking behind their mother's casket at the funeral the following weekend, and Harry's childlike writing of "Mom" on a card placed above the floral arrangement?

Twenty-five years later, the sight is still painful.