Note: This post has run in a slightly different form in years past.
More important note: Recent paucity of DCQ Daily posts notwithstanding, we’re still working on things over here. Big things. Potentially monumental things. Just not the daily-blog-post sort of things. Please trust us. Your boundless loyalty will be rewarded in the not-so-distant future. Details coming soonish.
Pop quiz! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 40 42 years ago today…
a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or
b.) One of the others
Answer: A! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room.
Yes, that’s the one. A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) apparently mishandled some nails and dynamite and…yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac’s stepdad. We are not making this up.
A slightly more thorough reflection from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn here.
