This Day in History, 1995: Unabomber Manifesto Published

[mabfan]

Exactly ten years ago today, on September 19, 1995, the New York Times and the Washington Post both published the manifesto of the Unabomber.

The Unabomber was Theodore Kaczynski, who started sending out mail bombs in 1978. In 1995, he mailed his 35,000 word manifesto to a variety of people, including former victims, demanding that it be printed verbatim by a major newspaper or else there would be more bombings. The Justice Department recommended the publication of the manifesto out of concern for public safety; the theory was that someone might recognize his writing style and reveal his identity to the proper authorities.

In fact, Kacynski's younger brother David recognized the writing style, and notified authorities, who arrested him. Kaczynski is currently serving a life sentence in ADX Florence.

More information can be found at Wikipedia: Theodore Kaczynski.

Comments

[rev69.livejournal.com]

david Kaczynski lives in the Schenectady, NY area, not too far (about 20 miles) from me.

[fizzixrat.livejournal.com]

When Ted Kaczynski's arrest hit the news, my mother-in-law realized that she recognized him as the crazy T.A. she had for one of her math courses at the University of Michigan many years ago. (The wife's parents were both math majors at Michigan at the time Kaczynski was in grad school there.)

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I would've gone with Scott Fahlman first proposing the :-) punctuation symbol in an email sent on 9/19/82 for the day's historical event myself.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I went with this one because it was a tenth anniversary. It's cool to find round number anniversaries when I can.

[crackboy.livejournal.com]

TK was in my dad's graduation class at Harvard. He's in the yearbook. He majored in math.