Transcript
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This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists you can connect with via video phone or chat. Here's BetterHelp head of clinical Operations Hes Yu Jo discussing who can benefit from.
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Therapy I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're like having panic attacks every day. But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody. There's always a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people. So if you're human, that's like a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody.
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Find out if therapy is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com today. That's betterhelp.com welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet.
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Of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. History is full of stories about aviation. It seems there's no industry that quite inspires the imagination like that of flight. More than ever since the days of commercial aviation in the early 20th century, air travel has unlocked parts of the world that would have seemed impossibly distant in the days of ships and trains. The average person was now a global citizen rather than being trapped on their home continent, which is one reason why airplanes are a marvel. But they can also be an escape. On July 10th of 1977, a plane took off from the city of Petrozavodsk. At the time part of the Soviet Union. It was bound for Leningrad with around 70 passengers on board a perfectly ordinary flight. However, two of the passengers aboard had other plans. Once the plane was in the air, they revealed themselves to be armed and took the entire plane hostage. They demanded that the plane take them to Stockholm, out of the Soviet territory. The pilots, concerned for the safety of themselves and the passengers, did what they could, diverting the plane west on top of their guns. It seemed that the two young men also had a grenade, which put everyone at serious risk, even if they could overwhelm the hijackers. The two men responsible were named Alexander and and ganady. One was 19 years old and the other was 22. They were convinced that their plan was going to go off without a hitch and no one was going to be hurt. That is, until the pilots informed them about the plane's fuel levels. It seems that the plane had been fueled for their original trip, but the distance to Stockholm was much longer than the distance to their original destination. Their plane just didn't have enough fuel to make the trip full stop. So the hijackers agreed to a compromise. The plane diverted to another Scandinavian airport, Helsinki, Finland. There they would refuel, replace the Soviet crew and complete the rest of the journey. They both assumed that they would serve time for hijacking when they arrived in Sweden, but wouldn't be extradited, which was good enough for both of them. A worthy price to pay for escaping the Soviet Union. The plane landed, and in a gesture of goodwill, Alexander and Gennady allowed almost all of the passengers to deplane. And holding back only a handful of people to serve as hostages, they issued their demands using the airplane's radio. And then they would wait. And wait and wait. Surely there were conversations happening on the other end. The Finnish government must be preparing to negotiate or provide the hijackers what they wanted. But in the cold confines of the plane, minutes stretched into hours, and after hours of waiting, the two men fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. The hostages on board, realizing what had happened, quickly left. When Alexander and Ganady woke up, they realized that they had been left alone on an empty plane. Worse, this plane was trapped in a country that still had an extradition treaty with the Soviet Union. Having no bargaining chips left, both men turned themselves in and were subsequently sent back to Russia. Their plans for their grand escape all amounted to nothing, and both men were eventually given relatively brief prison sentences. Fifteen years for one, seven for the other. In the aftermath of the hijacking, the Finnish authorities realized that the two hijackers were not nearly as dangerous as they had made themselves out to be. The grenade they had brandished was not even a real explosive, but a dummy grenade made for training purposes. But the cherry on top of this story is the global impact of the hijacking. There was none. Although it was a shocking and dramatic event in the lives of the airplane passengers, it barely warranted mention in the international news. There were two other plane hijackings that week, and this incident was the most benign of them all. Nobody was hurt, and the hostages weren't trying to shock the world with a political message. They were just trying to relocate from one country to another. And if they hadn't been so tired, maybe they could have done it. It just goes to show it's always possible to sleep on an airplane, even in the most stressful of conditions.