Browsing: Crime

A Brief History Earlier today, we covered the North Hollywood Bank Robbery of February 28, 1997.  Therefore, it only seemed right that we also count down the top ten famous shootouts in history! Digging Deeper 10. John Dillinger gunned down outside a Chicago theater, 1934. Set up by The Woman in Red, was given no chance to shoot back.  Having committed 24 bank robberies, two jail breaks, and four police station robberies, J. Edgar Hoover declared him Public Enemy #1.  Cracked fact: Ambushed by Agent Melvin Purvis, the same agent that was in on the Pretty Boy Floyd shootout! 9.…

A Brief History On February 28, 1997, Hollywood was outdone by North Hollywood in a real life shootout worthy of the movies! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the Los Angeles Police Department engaged in perhaps the biggest police versus robber shootout in American history!  To put it in perspective, about 2,000 rounds were fired of rifle, pistol, and shotgun ammunition! The two bank robbers, Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu (from Romania) were not rookies at the robbery game.  They had robbed an armored car in 1993 and were arrested a couple months later when during a traffic stop police…

A Brief History On February 26, 1993, New Yorkers were shaken during their lunch break by the explosion of a giant bomb! Digging Deeper Digging deeper (through the rubble) we find the same Arab-Muslim gang of terrorists who would later perpetrate the September 11, 2001 attacks plotting to take down the World Trade Center, a target they saw as the heart of American capitalism in a city known for having a large Jewish population. The plan was to place a giant 1,300-pound bomb in a rental van which would then be parked in the basement parking garage where the explosion was expected to cause one tower to topple into the…

A Brief History On February 23, 2010, pranksters pulled off what some consider the greatest series of prank calls in history! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find a neighborhood in Sugar Creek, Missouri the scene of the incident, at least on the victims’ side. (Why do they say Mizz-ur-uh when the state’s name ends in “i?” Just wondering…) Usually referred to as “A Nightmare on Burton Street” (derived from the film title A Nightmare on Elm Street), the prank calls consisted of 7 calls made by one or two pranksters using soundboards. Soundboards are recordings of other people, often other victims of prank calls, that…

A Brief History On February 20, 1987, one man’s hatred of modern technology led him to blow up a computer store! Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find the U.S. domestic terrorist known as the “Unabomber” striking for the twelfth time with a bomb disguised as a piece of wood! The bomb had been left in the parking lot of a computer store, and it severely injured the store’s owner.  The Unabomber would go on to strike four more times before he was finally caught. Professor Ted Kaczynski was a mathematical genius who had an IQ of 167 but also mental-emotional issues that perhaps…