PIRATES from United States

1. D. B. Cooper (1931 - 1971)

With an HPI of 72.05, D. B. Cooper is the most famous American Pirate.  His biography has been translated into 46 different languages on wikipedia.

Dan Cooper was the alias of an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, on November 24, 1971, bound from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. Cooper told the flight crew he had a bomb, and demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,600,000 in 2024) and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, Cooper directed the crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. After taking off from Seattle, Cooper opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the airstair, and parachuted to an uncertain fate over a remote, heavily wooded area of southwestern Washington. Because of a reporter's error, the hijacker became known as D. B. Cooper. The hijacker's true identity and fate remain unknown. In 1980, a small portion of the ransom money ($5,800) was found along the riverbanks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the crime but yielded no additional information, and the remaining money was never recovered. For forty-five years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintained an active investigation and built an extensive case file, but ultimately did not reach any definitive conclusions about Cooper's identity or fate, though they speculate Cooper probably did not survive his jump. In 2016, the FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case, although reporters, enthusiasts, professional investigators, and amateur sleuths continue to pursue numerous theories for Cooper's identity and fate. The crime is the only documented unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. Cooper's hijacking—and several imitators in the year after—prompted immediate and major upgrades to security measures for airports and commercial aviation. Metal detectors were installed at airports, baggage inspection became mandatory, and passengers who paid cash for tickets on the day of departure were selected for additional scrutiny. Boeing 727s were retrofitted with eponymous "Cooper vanes", designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. By 1973, aircraft hijacking incidents had decreased, as the new security measures dissuaded would-be hijackers whose only motive was money.