Not Your Century

After D.B. Cooper, the thing to do was take over a plane and demand half a million bucks and a parachute. It rarely worked, but it sure got tried a lot during the golden age of hijacking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A complaint in the Haight leads to the cops breaking up a hippie pot party. Among those under arrest: Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn. Rudy pouts and tells reporters, "You're all children!"  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The nation is captivated as Clarence Darrow battles William Jennings Bryan over evolution in a — but very real — trial. "Do you think about things you DO think about?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who ran the first African American-owned hospital in the U.S., was sure he'd performed the first successful open-heart surgery. It was actually the second, but he was still a giant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Reagan administration was trading arms for hostages in the Middle East and supporting right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. North's idea was to put the two together, and that was Iran-Contra. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More of our favorite episodes for your longer-form holiday listening, with stories about banana-smoking hippies, Evel Knievel, Randy Shilts and Herb Caen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the SFPD bunko scandal to the possibly imaginary criminal element of North Beach's topless joints, revisit our favorite law-and-order tales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I'm just very fortunate that I'm not dead," UC Berkeley professor Tom Tyler said after receiving a letter from the Unabomber. It was his manifesto, not a mail bomb. And Tyler wrote back.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The press called her Lady Lindy. She looked a little like Charles Lindbergh, but she was also a record-seeting flyer in her own right — an aviatrix, they called her. Now, an around-the-world flight almost done, she went missing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time, the world knows about a nuclear weapon being detonated before it happens. Some of the most brilliant scientists and engineers in the world ... have no idea what they're doing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gavrilo Princip was pouting in a cafe after missing his chance to assassinate the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Then the archduke's driver took a wrong turn down a narrow street — right in front of Princip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Five years after the heady optimism of Rio, the Earth Summit+5 international conference on climate change is a failure. But a confab on humor in Norway is serious business.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As World War II nears its end, Harry Truman announces the dawn of the U.N. in San Francisco. "If we had had this Charter a few years ago," he says, "millions now dead would be alive." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They used to call it "Custer's Last Stand," thanks to nearly a century of myth-making. But the real story is it was a great victory, but a last stand, for the Lakota Sioux Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Jimmy Carter owes nothing on his federal income taxes because of deductions and investments in the family business. So he sends a request to the IRS: Please let me pay $6,000. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices