Today in History - November 24 | Infamous airline hijacker sparks futile decades-long search
One of the most infamous unsolved crimes in US history happened on this day in 1971.
A man known as DB Cooper skydived from a plane after carrying out a brazen heist armed with a bomb.
Just after takeoff on the passenger airliner from Portland to Seattle, the man told flight attendants he had a bomb, and would blow up the plane and everyone in it unless he was provided with four parachutes and US$200,000 in $20 bills.
His request was passed on to the pilot, then the authorities.
The hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 airliner landed at Seattle airport.
With the plane still held hostage, the money and parachutes were brought on board as the passengers disembarked.
The flight crew were kept as hostages as the plane took off again.
Several hours after the ordeal began, the man jumped out of the plane.
While some pieces of evidence were later discovered, the hijacking would lead to a decade-long search that proved ultimately fruitless.
The FBI investigation into the brazen theft was closed in 2016.
Pictured is the parachute and parachute bag used by the hijacker DB Cooper to escape.
Pope John Paul II began a tour of Australia on this day in 1986.
His famous "popemobile" can be seen here on the streets of Adelaide.
The charismatic globe-trotting John Paul helped topple communism in Eastern Europe and John XXIII or "Good Pope John" is best remembered for launching a process of reform of the Catholic Church in the 1960s.
Here, he is pictured holding mass at Randwick racecourse in Sydney.
John Paul II was pope from 1978 to 2005 and was made a saint by the Catholic Church after his death.
In 2014 he was declared a saint by the current Pope Francis.
Crowds gathering in Sydney to see Pope John Paul II in Sydney, 1986.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed US President John F Kennedy, was himself shot on this day in 1963.
NIghtclub owner Jack Ruby pulled the trigger on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
As the shot rang out, police officers recognised Ruby, and exclaimed "Jack, you son of a bitch!"
Oswald later died in the same hospital where JFK had been brought after his own assasination.
Abel Tasman became the first European to visit the island that would later be named in his honour on this day in 1642.
Initially known as Van Diemen's land, it was renamed Tasmania in 1856.
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