On Thursday morning, Ford's testimony - about an alleged sexual assault in the early 1980s by Brett Kavanaugh, now a nominee to the US Supreme Court - transfixed Americans in coffee shops, subway carriages and Capitol hallways. It was a moment with tremendous political stakes: Kavanaugh's nomination itself seemed in doubt, and with it a firmer conservative majority on the nation's highest court. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations and is set to testify before the committee later on Thursday. He will seek to stir those watching with his own story of striving and service. But for many watching Thursday morning, the political importance of the moment was secondary. Twitter user Zette Emmons shared a photo of plane passengers transfixed by Dr Ford's testimony. Credit:CNN/Zette Emmons The power of the moment - the reason that people cried in airplane seats and called into TV networks to tell their own stories of sexual assault - was in seeing Ford tell a story of private pain before a massive public audience.

It was to see her speak, without knowing yet who would believe her. Women reported seeing other women weeping in the street as they watched the testimony on their phones.

"16A: Crying. 14B: Crying. 17C: Weeping," Ron Lieber, a New York Times columnist, wrote on Twitter from a flight headed from New York to Salt Lake City, listing the reactions as passengers watched the hearing on seat-back televisions. "I am one of the criers." As the hearings began, some of the busiest places in the country fell quiet. At the New York Stock Exchange, Brad Smith, an anchor for the news site Cheddar, said normally frenetic traders were all watching the TVs. Phones rang in the background, unanswered.

In the Capitol Building itself, the halls were quiet, as senators not on the Senate Judiciary Committee hunkered in their offices to watch TV. Students at the University of North Carolina School of Law watch Dr Ford as she testifies. Credit:AP Hundreds of kilometres away in Milwaukee, a small group of people - including a few nurses just off the night shift and still in scrubs - watched the hearings at Coffeetails, a coffee shop that sells alcohol until 11am. When the hearing began and Ford's face first flashed on the screen, the reaction was immediate. "She looks terrified," said one man at the bar.

"Worse than deer in headlights," replied another. "What do you expect," answered a woman nearby. A few kilometres away from the Capitol in Washington - a city so odd that its bars treat congressional hearings like bowl games, with early openings and drink specials - Shaw's Tavern opened at 10am, an hour earlier than usual. It offered bottomless mimosas. Casey Chapman, a retired restaurant chef and manager from Alexandria, Virginia, got there at 10.30am. He thought it was important to watch this in public, to show he supported Ford and other women who had similar stories to tell.

Republican senators watch on as veteran sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell questions Dr Ford. Credit:AP Chapman said he remembered that, when he was young, he had felt a sense of entitlement, that a man who is successful should be able to have his pick of women. That culture, he said, had gone on for too long. "It's time for their reckoning, and it's time for victims to have a chance to talk. It's time for a change," Chapman said. He said he had never assaulted anyone but that he looked back and thought his old attitudes were wrong. "The big difference is, I'm not trying to be a Supreme Court justice," Chapman added. "The time for making excuses is over."

Anita Hill, who testified in 1991 that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, cries after speaking at a university on Wednesday. Credit:AP Ellen Drumm, from Sarasota, Florida, came to the same bar with her daughter. Loading "I was a young girl when Anita Hill was up there, and I wanted to see if anything had changed," said Drumm, who is 59. In 1991, law professor Anita Hill alleged that she had been sexually harassed by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. After a contentious hearing process, Thomas was confirmed. While looking up at one of the TV monitors during Ford's testimony, Drumm added that she didn't see much of a difference between now and Hill's testimony in 1991.

Drumm said she thought Ford was credible and didn't see any reason she would subject herself to this type of scrutiny if she had not been sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh. Loading "I don't think they understand the impact [sexual assault] has on people," Drumm said. At Clark's Family Restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut - near Yale University, where Kavanaugh attended college and law school - an employee named Anna watched Ford's opening statement, in which her voice wavered as she recounted how Kavanaugh and another boy had allegedly assaulted her in a bedroom more than 35 years ago. "She's really giving details. He's in for it," Anna said as Ford started to read her prepared statement to the judiciary panel. She declined to provide her last name.