After a year of being down 6 to 1 on the Prank v Hack/Caltech v MIT scoreboard, the current breed of MITers successfully jumped ahead with the requisition of Caltech’s cannon. (My old dorm, EC, is in the background of the Globe’s pic.) A group of hackers traveled to Caltech in late March and procured the cannon by posing as a construction company with legitimate work orders. Turns out that Caltech fell for the same prank twice, albeit 20 years apart. More pics are here; my fav:

MIT showing its true colors: pasty white lab tan.
Update: Of course the first place Caltech looked was Harvey Mudd…

Subject: Caltech cannon
Date: 28 March 06 19:56:34 PST
To: [HMC internal mailing list]
Howdy,
Did anyone steal the Caltech cannon Monday night/Tuesday
morning? They called and said it was stolen and were hoping it was here.
Chris Sundberg
Associate Dean of Students
Harvey Mudd College