Slice of MIT

Slice of MIT


Secrets of the Caltech Cannon Heist

April 28, 2016

On March 28, 2006, a group of young men, disguised as movers and armed with phony work orders, arrived on the Caltech’s Pasadena campus. Within a few hours, the crew departed with the college’s two-ton Fleming Canon in tow. Eight days later, the canon reappeared 3,000 miles away, on MIT campus, with a massive MIT class ring on its barrel.

The movers, it turns out, were MIT students who had just carried out perhaps the longest-distance MIT hack of all time.

So, How does one borrow a cannon, drive it cross-country, and place it in the middle of a crowded campus, completely undetected? In this episode of the Slice of MIT podcast, we’ll hear from the MIT hackers involved in heist, as we celebrate the prank’s 10-year anniversary.

Music:
"Marty's Got a Plan"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/