This Day in History

‘Dashun’ ferry sinks in Yellow Sea

On 24 November 1999, hundreds of people die when ferry Dashun sinks in the Yellow Sea off the Chinese coast. The ship had caught fire while in the midst of a storm and nearly everyone on board perished, including the captain.
The Dashun, a 9,000-ton vessel, was transporting passengers from the port city of Yantai in China’s Shandong province to Dalian, near Korea. It was snowing and windy when the ship, carrying approximately 300 passengers and 40 crew members, left Yantai. Just a short way into the journey, a fire broke out on board. Although the exact cause is unknown, many believe that the gas tank on a vehicle aboard the ship may have ruptured.
The fire forced the passengers to the lifeboats. A distress signal was sent out at 4:30 pm (apparently officials already knew about the problems on board because a passenger had called for help on a cell phone), but the stormy weather delayed rescue efforts until the next morning. Reportedly, a crew member swam six miles to safety, but many others died after jumping into the freezing water and most of those who made it to the lifeboats, froze to death as they waited for rescue ships. Only 36 people survived. The fire on the Dashun was not put out until the evening of November 25 and the ship shunk about a mile off the coast.
The capsizing of the Dashun was the worst maritime accident in China since 133 people had died in a ferry collision on the Yangtze River in 1994.

Hijacker parachutes from ‘727’

Also on this day, in 1971, Northwest Orient Airlines 727 hijacker calling himself D.B. Cooper parachutes into a raging thunderstorm over Washington State, carrying with him the US 200,000 dollars in ransom money.
Cooper commandeered the aircraft shortly after takeoff, showing a flight attendant something that looked like a bomb and informing the crew that he wanted USD 200,000, four parachutes, and “no funny stuff.” The plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where authorities met Cooper’s demands and evacuated most of the passengers. Cooper then demanded that the plane fly toward Mexico at a low altitude and ordered the remaining crew into the cockpit.
As the plane flew over the Lewis River in southwest Washington, the plane’s pressure gauge recorded Cooper’s jump from the aircraft. Wearing only wrap-around sunglasses, a thin suit, and a raincoat, Cooper parachuted into a thunderstorm with winds in excess of 100 mph and temperatures well below zero at the 10,000-foot altitude where he began his fall.
No trace of Cooper was found during a massive search and his fate remains a mystery.
In 1980, an eight-year-old boy uncovered a stack of nearly USD 5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington.