'Tractor Man' shuts down Washington D.C.
41In the midst of major anti-war protests a man drove his tractor and two trailers into a shallow pond in Constitution Gardens near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
When police approached him the man threatened to detonate a fertilizer bomb in one of the trailers.
This prompted a two day stand-off involving hundreds of law enforcement officers and the closure of major roads in the area causing enormous disruption across the city.
It turned out there was no bomb and his actions were unrelated to the anti-war movement: he was a tobacco farmer from North Carolina who was protesting the cutting of federal tobacco subsidies and the growing anti-tobacco movement that he blamed for bankrupting him.
After much legal wrangling and psychiatric evaluation he ended up serving 16 months in federal prison