June 10, 1980: ’Unabomber’ Package Injures United Airlines President

In his Lake Forest, Illinois, home, United Airlines president Percy Wood opens a package that apparently contains a book. It contains both a book and a bomb in the book’s hollowed-out pages. It explodes, causing Wood to suffer cuts and bruises. The initials “FC” are found etched on, or punched into, a piece of pipe from the bomb. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). “FC” will later be found to stand for “Freedom Club.” [Washington Post, 1/23/1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Authorities will later speculate that Wood may have been targeted in part because of Kaczynski’s strange fascination with wood; he often uses wood in the construction of his bombs. The hollowed-out book, Ice Brothers, is published by Arbor House, whose symbol is a tree leaf. [Associated Press, 4/25/1995] The package contains a note asking Wood to read the enclosed book, and noting, “You will find it of great social significance.” The author of Ice Brothers, Sloan Wilson, also wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which, according to a 1959 biography of Wilson, “was the definitive epithet for the commuting suburbanite, the status-hungry conformist from Madison Avenue.” Like an earlier bomb (see May 25-26, 1978), this bomb’s package is mailed using postage stamps commemorating the playwright Eugene O’Neill; authorities will speculate that Kaczynski may have chosen the stamps because of O’Neill’s ardent support of anarchists. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995]