Art Attack

Here's a weird one: On this day in history, Laszlo Toth, a 33-year-old Australian geologist, slipped into St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, part of the crowd attending a mass. As the faithful waited for the Pope's blessing, Toth dashed past the guards, vaulted a marble balustrade, and attacked Michelangelo's Vatican Pieta with a sledgehammer, shouting "I am Jesus Christ!"
With fifteen blows (one for each minute of his fame?), he removed the Virgin's arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids. Although art historians wept over the damage, and the media decried Toth as a cultural terrorist, radicals hailed his "gentle hammer" with cries of "No more masterpieces!" (WTF?)
Toth was apprehended, and charged with crimes that would have brought a nine-year prison sentence, had he been convicted. In the end, though, the court found him insane. After two years in an Italian asylum,Toth was deported back to Australia, where he faded into obscurity.