The Max Headroom broadcast intrusion

On 22 November 1987 somebody took over two Chicago television stations. At 9.14 pm WGN-TV lost its signal for about 30 seconds to a figure in a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses rocking in front of a sheet of corrugated metal spun to fake the show’s background, with no audio but static and buzzing. At 11.20 pm the same figure came back on WTTW for roughly 90 seconds, this time with sound, running through a string of disconnected remarks and references, holding up a Pepsi can, and finishing by being spanked with a flyswatter. Doing it needed a microwave transmission stronger than the stations’ own feeds aimed at their broadcast towers, which means real expertise and real power, not a prank with a camcorder. There was a federal investigation and decades of amateur ones. Nobody has ever been identified.