This Day in History: Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski was captured at his Montana cabin in the United States on this day in 1996. [Ted Kaczynski came to be called the Unabomber because his early targets were universities and airlines — ‘Un’ for ‘University,’ ‘A’ for ‘Airline,’ unabom.”]
"Over a seventeen-year period, he mailed bombs to a number of targets (e.g., universities, airlines) killing three persons and injuring a score of others. While he was quite open about the socio-politico motives for his violent acts, thoughtful minds wondered how an otherwise intelligent and well-educated man could reduce himself to such acts of utter desperation." Source
"[Kaczynski] would leave messages encrypted with mathematical codes that not even the FBI could crack. He managed to escape capture for 17 years, a feat showing genuine intelligence. What finally did him in? When his manifesto was released, his brother and sister-in-law recognized the writing style and tipped off the FBI. Who knows if he would have been caught otherwise." Source
Of course, history is full of "geniuses" who've lost their minds in other ways, such as: Paul Erdos, Lord Bertrand Russell, John Nash, Nietzsche, Pythagoras, Lord Byron, Tycho Brahe, Michelangelo, Nikola Tesla, Empedocles, Poe and Sir Isaac Newton.
"...madness enters in some measure into most of the great minds with which history makes us acquainted; and that it often becomes very difficult to establish the difference which predispositions to madness present, from certain conditions known as those of reason."~M. Octave Delepierre
Was Ted Kaczynski a creature of the Left or the Right? He derided leftism as "one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world". He also addresses right-wing politics as a movement, describing conservatives as "fools" who "whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth".
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