Picture a man falling from the sky.

It's nighttime, late November in the Pacific Northwest.

The man is thousands of feet up, and as he plummets through the air, rain and wind surround him.

Below, he can see dark woods, fields, and rivers as the ground rushes up to meet him.

He's been described as a white guy, or perhaps in the language of the time in which he lived

as having olive's skin. He looks early middle-aged, his dark hair cropped close, his

hairline receding just a little bit.

A handsome, if somewhat nondescript face with worry lines, like he's seen some things.

He wears a business suit and crisp white shirt, though he lost his clip-on tie and sunglasses

somewhere along the way.

On his feet, he's wearing loafers. Maybe the man

sees city lights twinkling in the distance to the south, Vancouver, Washington, and Portland,

Oregon. Maybe he sees cars zipping down Interstate 5, that long road that stretches from Canada to Mexico.

Or maybe he can only concentrate on fumbling for the ripcourt of the parachute that stands between him and a long fall to certain death.

We don't know. We can only guess what happens next.

But we can assume that at this moment, tumbling through the air, the thing he cares about most, besides making it to the ground alive, is the bag he has with him.

It's tied shut with the shroud lines of another parachute, attached to his body with a handle fashion

from parachute rope. Inside the bag, $200,000 in cash. At this moment, the man doesn't know that he will

soon be one of the most notorious criminals in American history.

That for the rest of the century and beyond, he will be known by the name D.B. Cooper.

Not his real name, not even the alias he used when he bought a ticket for the plane he planned to hijack,

but a name that after this moment on the night of

...