In one of the most exciting scenes in 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” Batman infiltrated a secure building and captured a criminal who had fled the United States. He made his escape by deploying a balloon tethered to him that was snatched out mid-air by a passing aircraft. The whole scene seemed like classic super-hero fodder — after all, there’s no way a human being could actually escape that way, right? Advertisement

Think again. That scene was actually based directly on a very real CIA program called Skyhook (also known as the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system), which aimed to help rescue downed pilots or spies from behind enemy lines without ever having to make a stop. The concept was simple (and not all that different from its depiction in “The Dark Knight”). The downed pilot or

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