Whipped Cream Difficulties

40 years ago today, John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Natuarale tried to hold up a Chase Manhattan bank branch in Brooklyn. I believe this is what that location looks like today:

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Wojtowicz and Natuarale botched the robbery, and ended up in a 14 hour long standoff with police. The NYT has a retrospective.

And why does this matter, other than it being kind of a big deal at the time? Well, the robbery inspired a Sidney Lumet film:

Obit watch: Victor Poor, an influential early chip designer for Intel.

Noted:

Mr. Poor retired in 1984 and pursued a passion for sailing. Looking for a way to communicate while he was at sea, he developed a wireless data communications system, initially called Aplink, for Amtor packet link, and later Winlink. The system was widely adopted by radio amateurs, the United States military, and state and local emergency preparedness teams. It was credited with being one of the few communications systems that worked in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Edited to add: Thanks to Borepatch for reminding us it is also the 20th anniversary of the shooting of Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012 at 7:33 am and is filed under Clippings, Cops, Geek, Law, Movies, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.