On Tuesday, as it became more clear that an Egypt Air hijacking had nothing to do with terrorism (whew!) but was a bizarre attempt by a man attempting to be reunited with his ex-wife, the humour at Twitter spilled over.

Flight MS181 with 55 passengers on board took off from the coastal city of Alexandria for Cairo but was hijacked and forced to divert to Larnaca airport in Cyprus. Though the incident invited panic initially, everyone calmed down after the hijacker demanded to meet his ex-wife, who lives in Lanarca, and also sought asylum. An Egyptian foreign ministry official later said: “He’s not a terrorist, he’s an idiot. Terrorists are crazy but they aren’t stupid. This guy is.”

The hijacker, identified as Seif Eldin Mustafa, has now been arrested.

As always, Twitter had a field day with some taking digs at Mustafa's attempts to deliver a letter to his ex-wife.

Alas, the bar has also been raised for those hoping to impress.

But this isn’t the first bizarre hijacking in history. Here are five that boggle the mind.

1. Hijacker surrendered in exchange for beer
On June 21, 1985, an armed man in Norway hijacked a domestic flight with 120 people on board because he wanted to meet Prime Minister Kare Willoch to complain about how he had been treated by authorities.

The hijacker, a former convict, was armed, dangerous and probably thirsty. He commandeered the plane from Trondhiem to Oslo but surrendered later in exchange for beer.

An AP report at that time said:

  “The police said the hijacker positioned himself in a toilet from which he watched the two pilots and three flight attendants and demanded a steady supply of beer. An hour after the passengers were gone, he gave up to a police officer who refused to give the hijacker more beer unless he traded his pistol for it.”  

2. Heist at 6,000 feet, death on the ground
A jilted husband wearing a mask and allegedly carrying a grenade and a home-made parachute hijacked a Philippine Airlines flight carrying 300 people in May 2000.

A report in the Guardian quoted the aircraft’s pilot Captain Butch Generoso as saying that the man was “very angry, very temperamental”. The report also quoted Generoso as saying that the hijacker had told him that his family had left him and that his wife had an affair with a policeman.

After threatening the crew, the hijacker demanded that passengers give him all their valuables. The passengers complied. The hijacker then forced the pilot to bring the plane down to 6,000 feet so that he could jump out using his makeshift parachute.

Three days later, the police found his body embedded in the ground. The hijacker had died when he hit the ground after his parachute failed to open.

3. What is the third secret of Fatima?
An Australian national called Laurence James Downey, who claimed he was a defrocked monk, seized control of an Aer Lingus flight carrying 120 passengers from Dublin to London in 1981. He had an unusual demand: he wanted Pope John Paul II to reveal the third secret of Fatima.

This is a reference to Fatima, a town in Portugal, where three children reported the appearance of the Virgin Mary in 1917. The children said that the Virgin Mary had revealed to them three secrets, which they had communicated to the Church. Two have been revealed, but the third has not. Fatima is now a famous pilgrimage spot for Christians.

After the hijack, the plane was directed to Le Touquet in France. Downey held the plane for eight hours before French troops stormed the plane and forced him to surrender. No one was hurt.

4. An elaborate suicide
In 2012, Auburn Calloway, a flight engineer with Federal Express faced disciplinary proceedings for lying about his reported flight hours so he conceived of an elaborate plan to crash a Federal Express plane with him on board. He reasoned that this would enable his family to benefit from his $2.5 million life insurance policy as he would have been killed while on duty.

Calloway planned to kill the crew of the cargo flight he was taking a ride on using hammers so that their injuries would be consistent with those they would sustain in a plane crash. He carried two claw hammers, two sledge hammers, a knife and a spear gun hidden in a guitar case on board.

What Calloway didn’t account for was that the crew would fight back. Despite severe head injuries, the bloodied crew managed to subdue Calloway with the help of the first officer who conducted a series of aerial manoeuvres to roll the plane so that Calloway was pushed off balance. The crew managed to then overpower him and land the plane successfully. Calloway He was convicted and received two life sentences.

5. The only unsolved hijacking in the US
In 1971, a man who called himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest flight scheduled to go from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle in the US . When the flight took off, he passed on a note to an air hostess saying: "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."

The plane landed in Seattle where Cooper demanded $200,000 in cash, four parachutes and a refuelling. When he received the money, he let everyone except three pilots and a flight attendant go. He then ordered the pilots to take off once again in the direction of Mexico. Somewhere over Portland, he opened the door of the plane and jumped out. He was never seen again.

There are several theories about this mysterious hijacker with many suspecting that he died during his risky jump. This theory received more credence when in 1980 a boy found three wads of rotting notes with serial numbers that matched the cash given to Cooper.