FARRIS HASSAN, the 16-year-old Floridian who ran off to Iraq over the holidays, arrived home last week safe and sound. But that was only after he'd cut prep school and flown to Kuwait, taken a cab to the Iraqi border and been turned away, then flown to Beirut and on to Baghdad with little more than some cash, an Arabic phrase book and a half-baked plan to see for himself what was going on over there.
Mr. Hassan's war-zone jaunt was unusual but hardly the first or even the most outlandish of risky adolescent stunts. Remember Mathias Rust, the 19-year-old West German who in 1987 flew a tiny Cessna from Finland to Russia and landed in Red Square, hoping to bring Mikhail S. Gorbachev to terms of peace with the West? Or Keron Thomas, the 16-year-old Brooklyn subway enthusiast who in 1993 borrowed an A train for three hours and carried its 2,000 passengers safely and skillfully to their destinations?
Different kind of teenagers...
Right Stuff and Wrong in the Boys Who Dare from NYTimes
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