Hijacking

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: hijacking

Crime of seizing possession or control of a vehicle from another by force or threat of force. Although by the late 20th century hijacking most frequently involved the seizure of an airplane and its forcible diversion to destinations chosen by the air pirates, when the term was coined in the 1920s hijacking generally referred to in-transit thefts of truckloads of illegally manufactured liquor or to the similar seizure of rumrunners at sea. Airplane hijacking also is known as skyjacking. The first reported case of such hijacking occurred in Peru in 1931. Between 1968 and 1970 alone there were nearly 200 hijackings. The participants often were politically motivated Palestinians or other Arabs who commandeered airplanes while in flight and threatened harm to the passengers and crew unless certain of their comrades were released from jail in Israel or some other location. Air hijackings continued in the 1980s and '90s, though new airport security measures and international agreements on terrorism probably deterred many more. The deadliest act of air piracy to date occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 (see September 11 attacks), when suicide terrorists simultaneously hijacked four airliners in the U.S. and flew two of them into the World Trade Center complex in New York City and one into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.; the fourth crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pa. The crashes killed all 245 passengers (and 19 hijackers) aboard the airplanes and some 3,000 people in the buildings and on the ground. See also piracy; terrorism.

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WordNet: hijacking

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: robbery of a traveller or vehicle by force
Synonym: highjacking

The adjective hijacking has one meaning:

Meaning #1: stopping and stealing or stealing from a vehicle in transit
Participle of verb: hijack (meaning #1)

Wikipedia: Hijacking

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Look up hijack, hijacking, or hijacker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Hijacking, Highjack, or Hijacker may refer to:

Aircraft hijacking
Maritime hijacking or piracy
Hijack (band), a 1990s British hiphop group
Hijack (film), a 2008 Hindi film starring Shiney Ahuja and Esha Deol
"Hi-jacked", an episode of Joe 90
Hijacker (comics), a Marvel Comics character
"Hijack" (song), a song by Herbie Mann
"Hijack", a song by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship from Blows Against the Empire
"High Jack", a song from the Psychic TV discography
Hijacking, a variation of lead and follow

Carjacking
Credit card hijacking
DNS hijacking
Domain hijacking
Homepage hijacking
IP hijacking
Page hijacking
Reverse domain hijacking
Session hijacking
Hijack seat, a poker term
Bluejacking, the unsolicited transmission of data via Bluetooth
HijackThis (HJT), a freeware spyware-removal tool for Microsoft Windows
LoJack, a stolen vehicle recovery system

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Copyrights:

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hijacking". Read more