Sterling Hall Bombing
In response to the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, in which four protesters were shot and killed by the Ohio National Guard, Fine, along with brother Karleton and Dwight Armstrong and Leo Burt conceived of an attack on the Army Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, which had been a frequent site of anti-War protests. At age 18, Fine was the youngest of the four. Karleton made a bomb out of dynamite, 100 US gallons (380 l; 83 imp gal) of fuel oil and 1,700 pounds (770 kg) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
The bomb was placed in a stolen van left next to Sterling Hall, a building that housed the Army Mathematics Research Center, as well as the university's physics department. They lit the fuse after checking the windows of Sterling Hall and seeing no activity, assuming that the building was empty. The bomb detonated at 3:42 AM on August 24, 1970, killing Robert Fassnacht, a physics post-doctoral researcher who was working late, injuring three others, and causing millions of dollars in damage to the building.
Fine and the other three then drove to a truck stop where they celebrated the bombing. When they heard a news report on their car radio that someone had been killed by the explosion, all four went on the run.
Read more about this topic: David Fine
Famous quotes containing the words sterling, hall and/or bombing:
“The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
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