Cultural Phenomenon
While D.B. Cooper was an air pirate and extortionist (Himmelsbach famously called him a "rotten sleazy crook") who endangered the lives of 42 people and caused immeasurable inconvenience for many others, his bold, adventurous, unprecedented crime inspired a cult following, expressed through song, film and literature. Cities in the Pacific Northwest sold tourist souvenirs and held celebrations in his memory. He is remembered in Ariel, Washington with a 'Cooper Day' event held annually on the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend, and elsewhere with Cooper-themed promotions held by restaurants and bowling alleys. Cooper has also been used in the storylines of such popular TV series as Prison Break, NewsRadio, Numb3rs, and Leverage, as well as a book called The Vesuvius Prophecy based on The 4400 TV series.
Read more about this topic: D. B. Cooper
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or phenomenon:
“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“I do not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more like it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)