Ep: 1836 Mimi Nichter - Hostage

On September 6, 1970, twenty-year-old Mimi Nichter, wearing her green mini-dress, was returning home on a flight to New York/JFK Airport from a summer spent on a kibbutz in Israel when her airplane was hijacked by armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and redirected to a remote desert region in Jordan. The hijacking of Trans World Airlines Flight 741 was the first incident of international terrorism, and one of the most significant events in aviation history. Passengers were held on board for six days in sweltering heat without flushable toilets or running water. Most were sent home, but Mimi—falsely accused of being an Israeli soldier —and thirty-one others, were held hostage in Amman, fearing for their lives as a violent war erupted around them. She is a cultural and medical anthropologist, public speaker, and a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her essays have appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, and Brevity.