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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,

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Speaker 1: here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.

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Speaker 1: We hope it makes previous episodes for this date easier

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Speaker 1: to find in the feed. Welcome to this Day in

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Speaker 1: History Class from how Stuff Works dot com and from

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Speaker 1: the desk of Stuff you missed in History Class. It's

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Speaker 1: the show where we explore the past one day at

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Speaker 1: a time with a quick look at what happened today

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Speaker 1: in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,

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Speaker 1: and it's November twenty four. On this day in one

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Speaker 1: a man known as D. B. Cooper parachuted out of

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Speaker 1: a hijacked plane with a bag of ransom money and

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Speaker 1: was never seen again. So, on that day, this man

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Speaker 1: had gone to the airport in Portland, Oregon, and he

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Speaker 1: bought a ticket to fly to Seattle on Northwest Orient

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Speaker 1: Airlines flight three oh five. He gave his name as

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Speaker 1: Dan Cooper. It's not totally clear how that morphed into

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Speaker 1: D B. Cooper when he originally used the lea stand,

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Speaker 1: but he's definitely more known as D B. Cooper today.

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Speaker 1: He was described as looking like a typical traveler, dressed

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Speaker 1: in a business suit, six ft tall and a hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy five pounds and in his mid forties. This

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Speaker 1: wasn't a full flight. There were only thirty six passengers

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Speaker 1: on a Boeing seven seven that had a capacity of

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Speaker 1: ninety four. Shortly after the plane took off, he handed

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Speaker 1: flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note. She assumed that he

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Speaker 1: was trying to give her his phone number or something

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Speaker 1: that had happened before with other passengers, so she just

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Speaker 1: tried to ignore it. But he said, miss you'd better

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Speaker 1: look at that note. In all caps. The note said

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Speaker 1: I have a bomb in my briefcase. I want you

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Speaker 1: to sit beside me, so she did. He showed her

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Speaker 1: this briefcase and she could see six red sticks and

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Speaker 1: a battery and some wires, and then he dictated his

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Speaker 1: terms to her. He wanted two hundred thousand dollars and

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Speaker 1: used twenty dollar bills, y'all, so wanted two parachutes, one

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Speaker 1: for the front, one for the back, and two backup shoots.

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Speaker 1: And he wanted a fuel truck to be ready to

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Speaker 1: refuel the plane after it landed. He told her no

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Speaker 1: funny stuff or i'll do the job. So the plane

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Speaker 1: had to circle for a while while these demands could

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Speaker 1: be met, and then it did land. Cooper let all

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Speaker 1: the passengers go along with Shaffner, and they took off

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Speaker 1: again at seven forty six pm. He told the pilot

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Speaker 1: he wanted to go to Mexico, but he had some

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Speaker 1: pretty specific conditions for how he wanted them to get there.

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Speaker 1: He wanted the plane to stay below ten thousand feet

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Speaker 1: and to go no faster than a hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: miles an hour. The pilot let them know that they

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Speaker 1: could only do that if they stopped and refueled and Reno,

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Speaker 1: and he agreed to that, and then Cooper ordered the

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Speaker 1: one remaining flight attendant who had not been allowed to leave,

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Speaker 1: to go into the cockpit, which left him alone in

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Speaker 1: the cabin. At about eight PM, the crew noticed a

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Speaker 1: slight shift in their altitude, and then when they landed

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Speaker 1: in Reno, Cooper was gone. Based on when they had

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Speaker 1: noticed that dip, they estimated that he had parachuted out

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Speaker 1: of the plane near the Lewis River north of Portland, Oregon.

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Speaker 1: That area was calmbed thoroughly, but no sign of him

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Speaker 1: was ever found. The FBI opened an investigation code named

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Speaker 1: nor Jack, and on July seen they announced they were

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Speaker 1: redirecting the funds to other investigations and that this was

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Speaker 1: no longer an active open case. They called it quote

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Speaker 1: one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in our history.

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Speaker 1: But then in June of a team of investigators, some

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Speaker 1: of them former FBI, said they had identified dB Cooper

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Speaker 1: as a man named Robert reck Straw that was based

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Speaker 1: on the text of a purportedly coded letter. Although the

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Speaker 1: FBI had cleared reck Straw back in nineteen seventy two,

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Speaker 1: he had also previously been the subject of an entire

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Speaker 1: TV special. All the he has denied any involvement. Strangely,

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Speaker 1: the dB Cooper hijacking inspired multiple other copycat hijackers. The

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Speaker 1: nine seventies were a time when it was a lot

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Speaker 1: easier to get onto an airplane with weapons. There was

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Speaker 1: virtually no screening in US airports, and airlines also had

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Speaker 1: policies that in cases of hijacking, the crew were basically

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Speaker 1: to do whatever the hijacker asked. So other people also

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Speaker 1: hijacked planes to try to get money and then parachute away.

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Speaker 1: You can learn more about this on the October three

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Speaker 1: episode of Stuff You Miss In History Class called Who

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Speaker 1: Is dB Cooper that predates the closing of the case

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Speaker 1: and the renewed focus on Robert Rextraw. Thanks to KC. P.

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Speaker 1: Graham and Chandler Mayze for their audio work on this show.

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Speaker 1: And you can subscribe to the Stay in History Class

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Speaker 1: on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, and whoever else you get

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Speaker 1: your podcasts, and you can tune in tomorrow for the

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Speaker 1: assassination of three sisters the doom of the pop