In the ongoing battle of the nerds between Caltech and MIT, the latest volley has been fired from a 130-year-old cannon.
Actually, the latest volley is a cannon.
Massachusetts pranksters, posing as professional movers, stole the beloved Fleming Cannon — traditionally fired at each year's commencement — from the Pasadena campus last week.
On Thursday it popped up, pointed toward Pasadena and adorned with an oversized Massachusetts Institute of Technology school ring, at the Cambridge campus next to a plaque referring to Caltech as "its previous owners."
The plaque explained that the students created the phony "Howe & Ser Moving Company" and used fake work-order forms to get past Caltech campus security guards. After that, a real shipping company toted the 2-ton relic across the country.
The heist continues a long-running rivalry. Last year, Caltech students went to Cambridge to give prospective MIT students T-shirts that looked official. But on the back, they read: "Because not everyone can go to Caltech."
As for the cannon, it has traveled before. Twenty years ago, 11 Harvey Mudd College students spirited it off to Claremont.