Centinnial Olympic Park

 In 1992 after I bought my studio, and in 1996 Atlanta got the Olympic. After the announcement was made, Atlanta started a major transformation, and most of it was in my back yard.  The Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park is three blocks down the road from me, and it was the center of most of the Olympic fun.  My wife and I would walk there almost every night and spend hours watching live concerts from big name entertainers.  I said almost every night because there was one big night we didn't go.

Centennial Olympic Park was designed as the "town square" of the Olympics, and thousands of spectators had gathered for a late concert by the band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack. Sometime after midnight, Eric Robert Rudolph planted a green U.S. military ALICE pack (field pack) containing three pipe bombs surrounded by nails underneath a bench near the base of a concert sound tower. He then left the area. The pack had a directed charge and could have done more damage but it was tipped over at some point.  It was the largest pipe bomb in U.S. history, weighing in excess of 40 pounds.  It used a steel plate as a directional device^.  Security guard Richard Jewell discovered the bag and alerted Georgia Bureau of Investigation officers; 9 minutes later, Rudolph called 911 to deliver a warning.  Jewell and other security guards began clearing the immediate area so that a bomb squad could investigate the suspicious package. At 1:20 AM, the bomb exploded.
Alice Hawthorne from Albany, Georgia, was killed by a nail that struck her in the head.  The bomb wounded 111 others. Turkish cameraman Melih Uzunyol died from a heart attack he suffered while running to cover the blast.

Here is an impression of one of the nails from the bomb that went off