During the 70s and 80s a new phenomenon appeared. Television Hijacking. It started in 1977 when a man in England hijacked the sound broadcast of a newscast. In 1986, a hijacker known as Captain Midnight hijacked HBO in response to their scrambling of television signals. The year after (20 years ago as of today), a character disguised as Max Headroom (a television character) infiltrated two Chicago television studios in one night. First the man infiltrated Channel 9 (WGN) for a few seconds with no sound, and then moved on to attack another Chicago station, this time with sound. After the Max Headroom incident, television hacking incidents were rare in the United States except for this one in Wyoming.
posted by ooklala on Nov 22, 2007 - 38 comments

Japanese leftists seize plane with samurai swords. AWOL Marine sets record by hijacking plane from Fresno to Rome. Female Palestinian hijacker becomes radical chic pin-up. D.B. Cooper parachutes from 727 with $200,000 in unmarked bills. Have airplane bombings made us nostalgic for old-school skyjackers who just wanted money or a trip to Cuba? Academic papers analyze skyjacking in the 60s & 70s according to contagion and rational choice models. Check out a prescient pre-9/11 documentary on the subject with great archival clips.
posted by jonp72 on Aug 18, 2006 - 21 comments

Is your podcast being hijacked? The nature of RSS and podcast content makes it really easy for somebody to create new feeds based on somebody else's content and pass it off as the original through directories like Yahoo's or iTunes; then, of course, they potentially add advertising or use the built-up audience to extort the original podcaster. Podkeyword, the organization that has sparked concern about the issue, says they're not doing anything illegal or unethical; correspondence between Podkeyword and the guy whose podcast is at issue is available. [First pass legal take here, potential third-party retribution here; via.]
posted by aaronetc on Dec 14, 2005 - 31 comments

Attempted hijack on Dallas to Houston flight? RTE in Ireland is reporting an American Airlines jet bound for Dallas, Texas returned to Houston Airport shortly after takeoff because of what an airlines spokesman called 'a security incident' on board...just a precaution or was something serious going on?
posted by tomcosgrave on Sep 11, 2002 - 23 comments

Hijacked Plane Said to Land in New Delhi. NYTimes article -- you know the deal. CNN and Salon both confirm.
posted by brand-gnu on Oct 3, 2001 - 34 comments

A Sky Filled With Chaos, Uncertainty and True Heroism There's lots of fresh detail in this Washington Post story on flight 93, the only plane not to hit a target. "It was the hijackers' bad luck that they chose a plane with a number of large men on board. Beamer stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 200 pounds. Jeremy Glick, 31, another passenger involved in the apparent revolt, was a college rugby player and judo champion. Mark Bingham, 31, of San Francisco was a 6-foot-4 rugby player."
posted by NortonDC on Sep 16, 2001 - 5 comments

Hi Jack! HIJACK!! Hehe... You'd think they'd have addressed this problem a long time ago with pilots being named Jack...
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Oct 25, 2000 - 8 comments

Adobe.com gets hijacked. At the time of this posting, he still has it. Find out how you can hijack domain names in this step by step guide.
posted by kaefer on Oct 20, 2000 - 6 comments