- Bob Ladendorf
- Aug 24, 2020
- 1 min read
On August 24, 1970, student protesters planted an bomb at a building housing an Army research center that inadvertently killed a researcher, shattering a campus as well as the protests against the Vietnam. My unpublished paper about the impact of the bombing is attached.
It begins, "Watching the videos of the massive, deadly Beirut explosion on Aug. 4 caused by ammonium nitrate igniting in a warehouse, I recalled my horror as a student when hearing about another city jolted awake in the early morning hours 50 years ago. But that jolt was caused by an ammonium nitrate bomb placed by four antiwar protesters, killing a researcher, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which I attended five years later.
"About 3:45 a.m. on August 24, 1970, less than four months after the killings of four students at Kent State University and two black students at Jackson State that triggered nationwide student protests, a van filled with nearly a ton of ANFO — ammonium nitrate, a common agricultural fertilizer, mixed with fuel oil — pulled up beside a multi-story building. The driver lit the fuse and fled the scene. Several minutes later, a massive explosion brightened the sky, smoke billowing up like a mushroom cloud, according to a patrolman who witnessed the blast. It was felt 35 miles away, awakening the entire capital city of Madison."