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The Most Famous

PIRATES from United States

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This page contains a list of the greatest American Pirates. The pantheon dataset contains 25 Pirates, 2 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the 4th most number of Pirates behind Netherlands and Ireland.

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary American Pirates of all time. This list of famous American Pirates is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of D. B. Cooper

1. D. B. Cooper (1931 - 1971)

With an HPI of 65.66, D. B. Cooper is the most famous American Pirate.  His biography has been translated into 44 different languages on wikipedia.

D. B. Cooper is a media epithet for an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, the hijacker told a flight attendant he was armed with a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to approximately $1,500,000 in 2024) and requested four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, the hijacker instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About 30 minutes after taking off from Seattle, the hijacker opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. The hijacker has never been found or conclusively identified. The hijacker had identified himself as Dan Cooper in order to buy his one-way ticket in Portland, Oregon, but a reporter confused his name with another suspect and the hijacker subsequently became known as "D. B. Cooper".In 1980, a small portion of the ransom money was found along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the mystery, but yielded no additional information about the hijacker's identity or fate, and the remaining money was never recovered. For 45 years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintained an active investigation and built an extensive case file, but ultimately did not reach any definitive conclusions. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. The FBI speculates Cooper did not survive his jump, for several reasons: the inclement weather on the night of the hijacking, Cooper's unsuitable clothing and lack of proper skydiving equipment, the heavily wooded area into which he jumped, his apparent lack of detailed knowledge of his landing area, and the disappearance of the remaining ransom money, suggesting it was never spent. In July 2016, the FBI officially suspended active investigation of the NORJAK (Northwest hijacking) case, although reporters, enthusiasts, professional investigators, and amateur sleuths continue to pursue numerous theories for Cooper's identity, success, and fate. Cooper's hijacking—and several imitators in the following year—immediately prompted major upgrades to security measures for airports and commercial aviation. Metal detectors were installed at airports, baggage inspection became mandatory, and passengers who paid cash for tickets on the day of departure were selected for additional scrutiny. Boeing 727s were retrofitted with eponymous "Cooper vanes", specifically designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. By 1973, aircraft hijacking incidents had decreased, as the new security measures dissuaded would-be hijackers whose only motive was money.

Photo of Thomas Tew

2. Thomas Tew (1649 - 1695)

With an HPI of 56.53, Thomas Tew is the 2nd most famous American Pirate.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Thomas Tew (died September 1695), also known as the Rhode Island Pirate, was a 17th-century English privateer-turned-pirate. He embarked on two major pirate voyages and met a bloody death on the second, and he pioneered the route which became known as the Pirate Round. Other infamous pirates in his path included Henry Avery and William Kidd.

Pantheon has 2 people classified as pirates born between 1649 and 1931. Of these 2, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased pirates include D. B. Cooper and Thomas Tew.

Deceased Pirates

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