Today is Nov 24, 2022, which marks the 51st anniversary of NORJAK.
NORJAK was the most shocking, daring, even Robin Hood-like exploit ever to happen on board a Boeing 727.
On Nov 24 1971, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 took off from Portland to Seattle. A short time after takeoff, a passenger calling himself Dan Cooper called over the stewardess and handed her a note.
“I HAVE A BONB,” the note read.
“A bonb sir?” said the stewardess. “What exactly is a ‘bonb’?”
“A bomb,” whispered Cooper, “I have a bomb!” And he opened a bag that was lying on his lap to show a mess of wires, clocks, batteries, and what appeared to be red sticks of dynamite.
To make short tale:
Flight 305 landed in Seattle. Cooper allowed the 36 passengers to get off. But he kept the crew on the plane. He demanded $200k in 20-dollar bills — about $1.2 mil in today’s money — along with four parachutes.
And he got ’em.
Cooper then demanded the plane be refueled, and had it fly for Mexico City, at altitudes of less than 10,000 feet, at speeds of less than 200 knots.
And then, somewhere over Ariel, Washington, Cooper lowered the rear stairs of the Boeing 727.
He took off his tie, put on a pair of wraparound sunglasses, strapped on his parachute — and jumped.
In the weeks and months that followed, the FBI conducted one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in its history.
Agents interviewed over 800 suspects.
Other agents calculated wind speeds and flight paths and then still other agents combed probably areas for traces of Cooper.
But it all led to absolutely nothing. The hundreds of FBI agents and millions of dollars in government resources couldn’t find a single trace of Cooper.
And that’s how it stood for years — until February 10, 1980.
That day, the most unlikely thing happened. A few of Cooper’s 20-dollar bills surfaced, but in a place that nobody had expected.
Let me pause my story here because I really just wanted to set up a question I got.
The question came from a reader named Alex, who signed up for my Age of Insight training.
I’ve been following up with everybody who signed up to ask why they signed up and what they are hoping to learn. One of Alex’s wanna-learn topics was:
“How to give readers new insights into what they already know. So, for example, perhaps everyone knows a good subject line needs the curiosity element. But how can I retell this in a way that is different and insightful?”
My email today is one possible answer to Alex’s specific question about curiosity in subject lines.
As for Alex’s more general question — how do you take worn and familiar points, and make them sound insightful and new — well, there is another, very powerful strategy for that. I won’t talk about that today. But maybe I will tomorrow. In any case, if you’d like to read more of what I write, then click here and sign up for my email newsletter.