Brief belated historical note.

I had a day off yesterday and did a lot of running around, so I missed this:

50 years ago yesterday, on August 22, 1972, John Wojtowicz, Robert Westenberg, and Salvatore Naturile tried to hold up a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn.

Things did not go well. They expected to take between $150,000 and $200,000, but when they got to the bank, an armored truck had taken most of the money away. They got a total of $29,000 and tried to get away: Westenberg escaped, but Wojtowicz and Naturile didn’t manage to get away before the police showed up. The attempted bank robbery turned into a hostage situation…

…and if all this sounds familiar, yes, this was the famous “Dog Day Afternoon” robbery.

50th anniversary retrospective from the NYT.

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