A bad time a long time ago....

There is little overt physical evidence now that UW-Madison's Sterling Hall was the site of a horrific act of domestic terrorism.
To date, there has been nothing to mark the fact that a young post-doctoral student in physics, Robert Fassnacht, lost his life there.
That's about to change.

This afternoon, more than 37 years after a truck bomb blasted a crater in Sterling Hall, the UW-Madison physics department will dedicate a plaque in memory of Fassnacht, who was killed in the Aug. 24, 1970, attack.
"I'm personally embarrassed that it's taken so long," said UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, who knew Fassnacht well from his days here as a physics graduate student.
"The department's been trying to do something for a long while," added physics professor Wesley Smith.
The dedication will take place in the courtyard between Sterling and Chamberlin halls, near the bombing site.
Several members of Fassnacht's family -- possibly including wife Stephanie, son Christopher, and twin daughters Heidi and Karin -- are expected to attend.
"I did talk to Stephanie before we did this and got her permission," Wiley said. "We wanted to be respectful of her and she approved it."
The bombing capped a tumultuous time of protest on the UW-Madison campus against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The target was the Army Math Research Center on the upper floors of Sterling Hall, where it was alleged weapons research was being conducted.
The perpetrators hadn't counted on someone like Fassnacht being there at the time. Karl Armstrong, one of four people involved in the plot, said later that they bombed Sterling Hall in the wee hours of the night because they assumed it would be vacant. They hadn't wanted anyone to be hurt.
But Fassnacht, 33, was in his basement lab at Sterling Hall that night trying to finish a project before leaving on vacation with his family the next day for San Diego.
The blast at 3:42 a.m. was so powerful that pieces of the stolen Ford Econoline van containing the ammonium nitrate bomb landed atop an eight-story building three blocks away. Twenty-six buildings in the area sustained damage.
The bombing and Fassnacht's death rocked not only the Madison and university communities but also the anti-war movement.
The plaque commemorating Fassnacht's tragic part in history is simple, stating what happened there that summer morning.
There are lessons in that violent episode worth remembering, Wiley said, and posting a plaque is part of that.
"It's very valuable in a university that honors and respects free speech (to recognize) that there are limits to what's appropriate," Wiley said. "This was way beyond the extreme limits of what's appropriate."