What was the Golden Age of Hijacking?

who hopped onto the plane. He got up to the front of the plane that was carrying a hundred and sixteen passengers, and he demanded to talk to the Prime Minister of Norway and their Minister of Justice. He wanted to talk to both of these people. They weren't on the plane. He just insisted he needed to talk to them. Now. He had a gun, and he claimed to have more explosives hidden on him, but he didn't really have a plan. He just kind of let the plane go on its course.

But then it lands and he starts negotiating. Of course, you know, the guy had been drinking heavily the whole time, so he wasn't the world's best negotiator. So first he let off seventy passengers or so, you know, just just because. And then he said he let the rest of the passengers go, if the pilots would just taxi the plane on up to the terminal, that's what they're supposed to do anyway, I know, but he demanded that they do

that as well. So then once he drunk through the plane supply of beer, he said he'd turn over his weapons if he could just get a little bit more to drink. You know, he wasn't quite done with this, so he wanted another beer too, And then of course when the authorities brought him the beverage delivery, they arrested him.

That is so sad, I mean, like he's like the world's worst skyjacker and he didn't even take the plane somewhere fun or get his message to the government, I know, I mean, I don't really think he had a message other than that he was maybe dissatisfied with his life. But it does kind of get into something that we want to talk about today. Why were skyjackers so obsessed with commandeering planes? And was there a Bonnie and Clyde of skyjackers? And why was there a golden age of skyjacking?

And that's what we're talking about today, So let's dive ina. Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesha Ticketer. And on the other side of the soundproof glass slowly creasing. I think those are our show notes, say to these paper planes and throwing. Look at that one that was like soaring. Those things are glide. That's pretty impressive. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I

didn't even realize he had such a good arm. I had heard, you know, just from around the office. People like to talk about all the things that Tristan can do, so I had heard he had an incredible arm. But this, this really proves it. It is impressive. All right, Well, we'll spend another episode talking about all of Tristan's talents, but why don't we dive into this one? So, Mango, what was the golden age of skyjacking? So this is actually an era I didn't know much about until I've

read this incredible book. It's called The Skies Belonged to Us by Brendan Corner, and most of today's research comes out of that book. And of course we've supplemented it with stories and facts we've pulled from other sources. But listeners, if you're at all interested in this topic, definitely pick up Corners book The Skies Belonged to Us because it

is fascinating. So the Golden Age was basically between nineteen seventy two, and this is when security at airports was super lax, and over a hundred fifty flights were hijacked in the American airspace during that time. Supposedly, at the height of the trend, planes were hijacked nearly once and sometimes twice a week. Yeah, I mean there were stories of pilots who have been hijacked multiple times. It was almost routine by that point. And so we're passengers being

killed during this or what was happening? No, So that's the crazy thing, right, Like the hijackers were mostly pretty civil and the airlines handled it all very coolly. So often a hijacker just wanted to save passage out of the country, or wanted money, or to make some sort of political statement. And you read the story and you can't imagine how many hijackings are just happening one after another. It's like people just walked onto planes and decided to

hijack them on the spot. It's business people, academics, blue collar workers, people who were out of work, kids. I mean, there are more than a few stories of teenagers doing this, and supposedly every time there was press about a new type of hijacking like skijacking, a plan for political justice

then something that would lead to all these copycats. I mean, it's truly insane to read these accounts, but from my reading of the era, it really does seem like it was also more of an innocent time and these hijackers weren't really looking to harm or even bothered the passengers. I mean, that does sound weird to say, and and I know you don't want to downplay the violence, because there were definitely some deaths and injuries, but it wasn't

nearly as many as you'd expect from this time. And this this is a little bit off topic, but from that same period, I started reading this book called Days of Rage, just by Brian Burrow, and it's about Weatherman of the nineties seventies, and one of the things that struck me was that this bi agent told the author that in nineteen seventy two, setting off bombs was actually a pretty common way to voice political protests. And it's baffling how many bombs went off without people getting hurt

during that time. The agent was saying that they were over nineteen hundred bombings that year alone, and in an eighteen months span there were actually twenty five hundred bombings. Can you imagine that? Twenty hundred bombings, and so sometimes they were like five protest bombings in a single day. I mean, it's really unimaginable, like those sorts of numbers. Then, were there a lot of fatalities? No, I mean kind of like you were saying with the sky jacking, that's

that's kind of the thing that really weren't. People tended to use these small explosives and they target these abandoned buildings, and the bombs were treated maybe like a public nuisance. And this sounds insane to say this, but they were almost treated as a way for a political group to drop a press release. You'd have this explosion, they'd get some attention, and then they would make their statement. And according to Burrows, it was considered almost like the semi

ex up to its strategy for being heard. It just sounds so lawless and I don't ever want to return to those times, but you can see how commandeering a massive air bus kind of has that same appeal. It seems both quaint but also shows how desperate people were to be heard. So I do want to get into

the Golden Age. But your bombing story remind me about one of the weirdest things I remember learning in college, and it's that Yemen used to be considered one of the best places in the world to be kidnapped, Like it was really just about holding you until someone forked over at ransom. And this was kind of the practice

even through the nine nineties. So I read this one account from an American diplomat who was kidnapped there, and he said that while the initial shock of being kidnapped is of course unnerving, once he was brought to the kidnappers lair, they greeted him with this beautiful recited poem what And then they fed him well and offered him caught to chew, which is, you know, that mild stimulant.

And there are other accounts of this too, like so the Washington Post had interviewed this man who was he was giving cigarettes and cookies and teed to keep his spirits up, and another person was you know, told to teach kids English to stave off his boredom, and allowed visitors, and he could go on these walking tours of the city and make phone calls home, and he was even

brought reading materials that he requested. It's crazy. I mean, I imagine the tourism board coming up with a slogan of like how they're the best place in the world to be kidnapped. And I don't want to make light of this, but it really is just so bizarre to read about this stuff, I know, and it was considered pretty normal. And often after a few days when the ransom payment had gone through, the kidnapped folks would emerge with souvenirs like they take home beautiful curved daggers and

luxurious robes. That guy who has read that beautiful poem, he still has a copee of that poem. It's insane. But obviously it's not like that anymore, especially since like all Kinda and other extremists have gotten into the act now being kidnapped as much more deadly. And you know, Yemen's four star kidnapping reviews have certainly gone down. Yeah, I mean, it is completely terrifying. But all right, well let's bring this back to the Golden age that we

were talking about before. So just just to set the scene a little bit here, this general period was one of a lot of political unrest. We're talking about again, nineteen sixty one nineteen seventy two, and there's a lot going on, think about you know, the Vietnam War and civil rights and hippies and black panthers, and you know, the Cold War is going strong, and there's quite a bit of political distrust of the establishment during this time. And of course you know there have been a few

skyjackings in other countries as well. Right, that's right, And hijacking wasn't even the preferred terms, So hijackers were mostly called escape ease during this period, partially because hijacking was seen as this almost negative term that had been lingering from the prohibition era. Yeah, you know, supposedly the term came from these highway robberies, you know, when a mobster would greet you with a friendly hijack and before of course taking your truck and all the alcohol that it

was guarding. Yeah, but this was a little different since they weren't you know, typically mobsters. It was mostly people just defecting from communism, and there was an early case of three different planes being simultaneously rerouted from Czechoslovakia to West Germany, where the defectors were welcomed like heroes. And then there was there was almost this like cute story

where six hijackers took over a plane in Europe. They made the pilot fly over Lisbon so they could drop leaflets from the sky and it was just like print outs protesting the government there. And once they had sort of distributed all their flyers, they asked to be dropped off in Morocco. I mean, it makes it sound so harmless, you know, but that people saw planes is their only

way to flee from their home countries. Is it's really interesting to think about, you know, Like during that time, there's all this back and forth of people fleeing Cuba to come to the States and then people demanding that planes be rerouted to Havana. Yeah, that stuff is fascinating. In fact, the first U s light that was skyjacked was by a guy who wanted to be taken to Havana. He took a knife into the cockpit and demanded the

plane go there. But what's Also interesting about the time is that you couldn't really take a plane that far. What do you mean by that, Well, we're talking about the sixties and there's one story will get into the later of of a guy who wanted to be taken to North Korea, but a plane just wouldn't get you that far. So even in the eighties when my family would go back to India, the trip would take forever.

It was a twenty two hour journey. And the reason was that from JFK you'd have to make a pit stop in Paris or London, and then you fly to Cairo to refuel there, and then you go to Delhi

to refuel, and then you get to Bombay. Like everyone on the plane was going from JFK to Bombay and it was ludicrous, right, But actually, in Corner's book, a lot of the stories are hijackers negotiating as their plane is being refueled or then being directed or redirected to another airport before they're you know, getting their money in parachutes and then they take off for the international journey.

But part of Havana's appeal was that you could actually touch ground in a communist nation without having to refuel just so strange. Well, you know, I was looking into the whole Cuba America relations during that time, and it's really interesting to see what was happening. So after Castro takes over, the Cubans start hijacking planes to land in the US. You're mostly Key West or Miami. And you know, one of the funny things was that this ad exact name,

Irwin Harris, immediately started claiming these planes. His whole thing was that he'd run a super expensive tourism campaign for Havana and Castro and the government still owed him close to five hundred thousand dollars for his efforts, so kind of being a showman, he welcomed them as his own. But here's the weirdest part of this. The US government actually let him auction off the planes and keep the

money from this. Castro was obviously peeved that people were stealing Cuban planes and fleeing the country, but the fact that the US wasn't giving the planes back and instead letting Harris auction them off, I mean, that just got him angrier. And that was, of course the whole point. I mean, that's what the American government wanted to do, and so they let Harris sell eleven planes. Eleven planes

feels insane. But at that time, the U S didn't really believe anyone would steal an American plan, right, Yeah, that's right. I mean they were a little bit cocky about it because, you know, as they thought about it, like who would want to leave America? And so suddenly in nineteen sixty one, when a hijacker demands that a US plane reroute to Cuba, things start to shift a

little bit. So obviously Cuba becomes a big lure for American dissidents, and people think they're going to be welcomed with open arms, and particularly those who have been disenfranchised. Because Castro was telling the world he's building a new type of country. Yeah, you know, as one skyjacker put it, as he saw the runway lights, quote, in a few hours, it would be dawn in a new world. I was

about to enter paradise. Cuba was creating a true democracy, a place where everyone was equal, where violence against blacks injustice, and racism, where things of the past. I'd come to Cuba to feel freedom at least once, you know. But of course that freedom he longed for wasn't really the case. And Castro loved that these flights were coming in because it humiliated the US and he got a little bit of ransom out of it. I think you charged the

airlines something like bucks to return each plane. You know also that this is funny because the US and Cuba didn't interact, but there was actually this quick form to make that transaction happen, and they would have to do this through the Swiss embassy in Cuba. Just for being

able to retrieve these planes. It's so strange, that's funny. Well, how are the passengers on the planes treated like I I know in some cases passengers were let off on the first refueling, but uh, I'm guessing that always didn't

happen in these kidnappings in Cuba. Well, you know, often the passengers on the planes got a nice night out of it, which you know, they'd they'd be put up in a fancy Havannah hotel, they'd be given cigars and smooth RUMs, the ability to go shopping, and then they just be put back on the plane and they'd go home. Hijacking was actually happening so often that Time magazine even put out a little guide for being skyjacked. And you know how to make the most of that experience. It's

so weird. I was looking at some of the tips and they're like one of them was don't ring the button for the flight attendant, since that, you know, that could startle the hide jacker. So great, but also recommended the chorus lines and Dacris and shopping for East German cameras, you know, which you could get for a steel in Havannah's markets. That's so weird. And what happened to the hijackers, now,

this is actually a pretty different story. Castro was was really full of contempt for these hijackers, so they weren't treated like Harris. And why is that. Well, he didn't want revolutionaries in his country, is really what it came down to. So, you know, when they landed, they were taken in for these brutal interrogations. Castro was actually convinced that some of these people were spies for the US government. You know, depending on what the interrogators thought, their fate

was made up for them. Some of them ended up in sugarcane fields, which was just nightmarish, and you know, some people were lashed and beaten and the conditions were pretty terrifying. The other option was being sent to a place called the Hijackers House. And at one point this building, which was just like two stories tall, it had sixty hijackers there, but they got a stipend of I think it was forty pasos and onth But the living wasn't easy. I think each person only got about fifteen or sixteen

square feet of personal space when they were living there. Honestly, I didn't really think about the fact that there would be like sixty hijackers stuck in one communist house. It kind of sounds like the worst season of the real world. Like, but why did people still come to Cuba? I don't know, man Go, I've seen some pretty terrible seasons of the

real world. But to your question, I have read a few accounts of this, and you know, even though the information about the conditions in Cuba was being covered by the press and spreading to the US, people were still just kind of hopelessly starry eyed that Castro would see their case differently. Actually, let let me just quote Corner here. He says, um, every skyjacker was an optimist at heart, supremely confident that his story would be the one to touch Castro. The twenty eight year old air to a

New Mexico real estate fortune. He had hijacked the Delta Airlines jet while inexplicably dressed as a cowboy. You've got so she allo student from Kalamazoo, Michigan who wanted to study communism firsthand. You've also got a thirty four year old Cuban exile, and he diverted a flight because he could no longer bear to live without his mother's delicately seasoned free holays. So the list goes on and on. It's just crazy. Well, I want to get into what the airlines did and why it took them so long

to fight back. But before that, let's take a quick break. So welcome back to Part time Genius, and we're talking about the golden age of hijacking. Well, did I ever tell you about the time I was in the kind of Do airport. I'm not sure. Maybe. So this was just before the millennium, and I was done with my study of broad program and leaving a few days early

just to visit my relatives in India. And at the front of the airport and come and Do there was an X ray machine, but the line for it was insane. And you know, I'm curious, so I looked a little closer, and for a single machine, there was just so much

bureaucracy going on around it. Like there was one guy who was barking orders, making sure you took all your belongings and put them on the conveyor belt in the right order, and then there was someone else kind of rearranging and repacking them as they fed into this X ray machine. And then there was a third guy on the other side, and he was meticulously putting stickers on each bag to show what had gone through the machine. But no one was actually looking at the X ray part.

So did you end up saying anything? I mean, who do you tell? Right? Like, I just kind of noticed and laughed it off, and that's usually where I cut the story off. But this is the scary part. So someone else must have been noticing too, because two or three days later, the same afternoon flight I took from Cutman due to DELI on the same airline was actually hijack. Yeah, it's insane, right, So they took the plane to Afghanistan and it was tense. There were people on the tarmac

For two days. I was glued to the TV because I was really afraid I knew someone on the plane. Uh. This was also a flight that I thought about taking, you know, postponing my trip by two days. But thankfully, no one on the plane was hurt. And this was pre nine eleven, so it was before there were these really strict security measures that most of these airports. I think when I flew out of Philadelphia that summer earlier for my trip, my parents even dropped me off at

the gate before I went. And I'm not sure if you remember that, but like people could actually go to the gates or receive you there. It's crazy, but it's almost hard to remember what security used to look like in the eighties or nineties, let alone in the sixties. Yeah, that's true. I mean security was definitely lax in the sixties and it's pretty fascinating to read about it because you know, the responsibility was pretty much on the airlines

to maintain that security. So why is that. Well, they didn't want to spend money on the security to stop these hijackings. I mean, they're they're big thing was no violence. And when they did this risk benefit analysis and they decided to calculate it out the way they saw it was as long as the passengers weren't being harmed, it was actually cheaper for the airlines to just comply with

a hijacker. They'd agree to send him on a joy ride, maybe give them a little bit of ransom money, and just deal with all the canceled flights that happened because of this, And that was all seen as preferable rather than paying for more security at the airports. And you know, you also look at ticket sales at the time, I mean, they were at an all time high in the airlines believe that subjecting people to checking bags and patting them down was it was kind of like treating them like criminals.

And so they didn't want ticket sales to drop from any of these measures, so they fought tooth and nail against adding any security. In fact, they had a really strong lobbying arm just to prevent that from happening. It's really weird to think about that airlines weren't actually trying to lessen the threat of hijackings. And it's also interesting that like skyjacking evolved and how it evolved, Like people were stealing planes in the nineteen sixties, and it was

always to fly to a different country. But the airlines were caught off guard the first time someone actually demanded a ransom. Why would that be? I guess it just didn't occur to them, like they thought that skyjackers were a higher class of criminal and just interested in safe passage. But changed with this guy named Arthur Gates Barkley in ninety three. So Barkley was this truck driver who has let go from his job and had a lot of court cases that he'd filed and just wasn't winning any

of them. One was over a five dollar tax bill which he claimed was miscalculated. Anyway, he was disgruntled and he petitioned the Supreme Court, who of course didn't want to hear his case. And he was so angry that no one was listening that he decided to hijack a plane. So does he take it to Cuba or where does he go? No? In fact, the pilots were stunned when he sent it only thirty miles off course to Dallas, Virginia. He wanted a hundred million dollar ransom from the Supreme

courts coffers. He was specific about that in exchange for the safety of the passengers on the plane. And this is an insane ask, right, Like, a hundred million dollars is a lot of money, and he's clearly desperate and not in his right mind, and of course the airline is totally unprepared, so instead they bring him a hundred

thousand dollars, which is a little less than a hundred million. Yeah, I mean that's what quick calculation, and I think that's a thousand times less than a hundred even a hundred thousand dollars. I mean that's still a lot of money. Yeah, But he was pissed. So there's this dance where he gets the pilots to take off and then he lands again, trying to get his full hundred billion dollars, and this

time the Feds are ready. They just shoot out the landing gear and everyone on board escapes out this back hatch while he's distracted. In fact, this is a great story of a photojournalist on board who waits to be the last person and he coolly snaps the photo of Barkley just angry in a pile of hundred dollar bills before he jumps out the hatch, and then the Feds come on board to arrest him. But the interesting thing is how the hijackers. Spouse responded once Barkley was arrested.

So instead of feigning ignorance like you'd imagine most wives of criminals might, she was almost supportive. Like she was filmed in front of boxes and boxes of legal correspondence that Barkley had been sending out, and she said kind of what we're saying at the top of this show, that this was an act of a person who didn't have a voice. And as she put it, quote, he believes in this country and the constitution. He believes in what he was fighting for in World War Two, but

the government wouldn't even listen to him. He did it to get someone to pay attention to him. He was trying to help us, but he made it worse. Yeah, and you can sense the desperation there. But yeah, there was this genuine public rooting for the outlaw at that time. And of course those weren't the only types of criminals. You know, there's the dB Cooper hijacking, which also emerged in this era. Was the swave gentleman Robbert who hijacked a plane and parachuted off with all these bags full

of money. And of course there's the story of Holder and kirk Ow, who I know you want to talk about a little bit. You know, there was lots of glamor in this crime, but you know, the airlines were just absolutely resistant to doing anything to prevent it. In fact, you know, there's this memo from nineteen sixty eight that Eastern Airlines sent out to all employees and it made it clear that all attempts at heroism by the pilots were totally forbidden, and instead all cockpits were equipped with

the flight to Cuba charts. You know, regardless of their destination, they had to know how to get there. They also had these little cars to show them how to communicate with the Cuban ground crew in Spanish once they arrived. That's so weird, and it's odd that that's the best that the airlines of the government, you know, could come up with. Well, you know, there were a few ideas that cropped up to try to soothe the problem without adding the burden of security. Of course, yes I'm curious,

but what I was gonna do? Well, some seem smart on the surface. We're talking about nineteen sixty eight here in the State Department offered free one way tickets to Cuba for anyone who wanted to go, and this was on the condition that people wouldn't return. Of course, you know, Castro wasn't having any of that. He didn't want them in his country, and of course not Yeah, and in nineteen sixty nine f A entertained all sorts of ideas. One of these included building a replica Havanah Airport in

South Florida, just to trick the high checkers. Then as they really got into they they realized, you know, that might be expensive to build. But you know, they also consider things like trap doors or giving flight attendants tranquilizer darts. And you know, one of the proposals from the public was to make all passengers wear boxing gloves so that

they couldn't operate a gun on board. There was another let's see what else here, you know you've got you could you could play the Cuban national anthem and see who stands up? I guess, and it just it started to get silly. But you know, people were just resigned to the fact that this is what air travel was.

And in night, the Pittsburgh Presses editorial board wrote an editorial that said, quote, it seems the best we can do is add airplane hijacking to the list of things we don't like, you know, along with sin and high taxes. That is really such a baffling idea that everyone was just willing to accept this, And I know there was also a little bit of a psychological profiling that got popular at the time to you know, to try to

better understand the mind of these criminals. Oh yeah, I was looking at this as what so, so you're talking about the David Hubbard and and and all that psychoanalysis stuff, right, Yeah, it's fascinating to me. So Harvard interviewed I think thirty or forty skyjackers and came away believing that they all shared a similar past. He was just like pop psychiatrists

who became really popular. And uh. He assumed that all skyjackers had strict religious moms, they had dads who are alcoholics, they had been bullied, and this is sort of the clincher that they were all bad and incompetent with women. And that last part is important because that's what made them interested in airplanes, which he saw as a stand

in for their members triumphing over gravity. These theories, you know, when Hubbard was actually propped up by the airlines because he thought skyjackers were too smart to be stopped by any of these security measures. So that suited the airlines because it took the blame off of them, you know. Instead, he thought that if the public linked these crimes to sexual inadequacy and also train more female astronauts to make flying seem less. Macho, I guess the crimes might then stop.

What a character and what if our time? Well, let's quickly talk about Roger Holder and Kathy Kirko and how the government finally put a stop to skyjacking. But first one, don't we pause for a little break. Welcome back to part time genius, Now, Mengo, I think you wanted to tell us a little bit about Roger Holder and Kathy kirk how and and their whole story, So you want to dive into that. Yeah, that's right. So they're the

Bonnie and Clyde of air travel for sure. Honestly, for anyone who really wants to hear the story, you have to go get Brendan Corner's incredible book because his reporting is incredible. But here's the fifty cent version. So Roger Holder ahead this really really rough upbringing. His dad was devout and a good military man, and he moved the family in good faith to Oregon, but he didn't realize how rough it was going to be for the family.

Roger had this terrible time as a child, like his family tries to move in and then someone won't rent them the house once they realized as the family's black, Roger and his siblings are beaten and bullied mercilessly in this very racist town. They end up in the hospital. It's truly horrific. He's incredibly smart, but other than building model planes and then juggling girlfriends when he's a little older because he's smooth and good looking, there's a much

of a story, but for a few reasons. He ends up in listing in Vietnam, and he's an incredible soldier, like he's on a number of high profile teams and missions. But along the way he sees horrific things, and he starts using marijuana to self medicate, you know, which is common, but at the time the army and the military were

going after any sort of drug use. And when he's caught, he's massively demoted, like he has PTSD and after winning all these honors, he's essentially revoked of any honor and he's a private again, and he can't take that sort of disrespect after serving for his country and putting his life at risk. So he ends up a while at home,

which is when he meets Kathy Kirka. She's someone who grew up in the same town as him, but she's now selling pot and working at a massage parlor in San Diego, and they kind of fall for each other really fast. She has a thing for smart, dangerous men, and they're both really sexy and Holders into astrology. He's determined that meeting Cathy was fate and that they're destined

for something big. And when Angela Davis, the Black Panther and Professor, is imprisoned holding, kirk how decided to hijack a plane to get her out of prison. But before they do, Cathy famously asked Holder, what do you wear to a hijacking? Like she wanted to be dressed for the event. Anyway, their story gets much crazier. They actually

get five thousand dollars in ransom. They try to fly to North Korea, but then they end up flying to Algiers, where they joined Eldrige Clever and this international section of the Black Panthers and eventually they run for fourteen years. They live it up in Algiers. They meet all these like famous people in France, Like they're drinking buddies with starts and like all these other like philosophers and artists

and celebrities, and kirk How becomes a socialite. I mean, they're everything that was glamorous about at era, but they're also kind of sort of the last remnants of it. It is just such a strange story art, but do you want to tell the listeners what what ended up happening to him? So this is the weirdest part. Kathy kirk How is still at large, like no one's ever founder, and the theories that she fled to Switzerland with a fake passport and then just disappeared. She was amazing at languages,

and it's just a crazy story. And holder along the way he had some more mental problems and he decided to come back to the States and turn himself in. But kind of underlining how much people really didn't care about Ski Jackings. Fifteen years after the era, he only got something like three years in a medium security jail in North Carolina. It's just an insane story. And you know, in Kathy kirk how if you're out there, we'd love

for you to be a guest on the show. You know, you can hit us someone Facebook, Twitter or in our seven Fact hot line. I mean, actually it's seven for a reason, right, I know, yeah, definitely. But you know, of course, stories like Holder and Kirkow stopped once security measures were put in place at these airports, and that was in nineteen seventy three, and then there was an

agreement that was made with Cuba return hijackers. Basically, both the government and the airlines knew something had to be done to curb this epidemic. And according to the book

we've been talking about, this guy's belonged to us. When security was tightened, reporters were excited to report the backlash from travelers, so they stalked these giants security lines trying to get quotes, but there actually really weren't any, and people just seemed to accept that there needed to be a trade off and we're happy to go through metal detectors and weapons checks just to feel more safe. Yeah, and of course the airlines just grumbled about the inconvenience

and price tag. I'm sure, right, Yeah, So there was a University of Chicago economist who looked into this and and said that the cost of deterring a single hijacking was as high as nine point to five million dollars. You know, the public was on board and ticket sales went up, and it kind of closed the chapter on this golden age of skyjacking. What a bizarre era in American history. But you know, before we land the show, what do you say we pause for a fact off,

So I'm gonna start when the Supernintendo launched. Nintendo supposedly made the shipment at night so it wouldn't be hijacked by the Yukuza. Mhm. But we talked a little bit about dB Cooper. But did you know that the FBI has investigated over a thousand suspects trying to find him, and apparently the files in the basement of the FBI Seattle office phillips several long rows of shelves there. Do you know there's actually a bar that celebrates the anniversary

of DV. Cooper's heist and they do it with a lookalike contest. It's an aerial Washington, which I guess is where Cooper may have landed, and the festival has all this beer and live music toasted dv or Dan Cooper as it's called, But there's also a lookalike contest for people who not just look like Cooper but also members of the plane's crew. That's so strange, are well here's a here's another weird one. In five year old man

hijacked and air LINGUS plane using a cigarette lighter. The only thing he demanded that Pope John Paul the Second should release a secret prophecy, the Third Secret of Fatima. Basically, he wanted religious spoiler and did the Pope deliver? And not then? I mean John Paul revealed the secret and two thousands so almost twenty years later, which I guess got lost in all the press for Dan Brown's book at the time. Yeah, I didn't hear about it. So

here's the craziest thing I've read about hijacking. Did you know there's a Somali pirate exchange where people can bet on their favorite real life pirates. Oh wow, that's so evil. I know it's pure evil and I read it about it in pop Side. But here's what they wrote, land Lover Somali civilians can invest in one of seventy two maritime companies and hope that their favorite pirate band strikes it rich with the successful ransoming of a captured ship

and crew. I mean it's basically a fantasy lead for pirates. And one wealthy former pirate told Reuters that the Stock Exchange had won local support by making piracy in to a quote community activity, community activity. It almost makes it sound sweet. That's funny. All right, Well, did you know that in nineteen sixty nine, Alan Fund from Candid Camera was on a plane that got hijacked. Now, everybody on the plane was totally calm because they thought it was

part of a prank show. They only realized it wasn't a gag when they looked out their window and realized they'd landed in Cuba. I love that so actually, I think that's a great one to leave us on. What why don't you hold onto the fact off trophy for now? Thank you very much, Well, thank you guys for listening today. If we forgot any great facts you'd like to share with us, feel free to send us an email part time genius at how stuff works dot com. You can

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