Justice
The Time Metal Thieves Hit the Top of the Washington Monument
Never put anything past a criminal with a desperate thirst for scrap.
Metal thieves don’t bother drawing many boundaries—plucking bronze stars from soldiers’ graves, harvesting flush valves from public bathrooms, somehow making off with more than 400 hand straps from Tokyo’s commuter trains.
The illicit harvesting of copper, aluminum, and other hardware isn’t a new phenomenon. One of the most brazen metal heists happened around this date back in 1935, when fearless thieves scaled the Washington Monument to capture a trove of high-priced lightning rods.