Less than a week later their ambitions were crushed when Britain's Special Air Service (SAS), an elite group of soldiers (pictured), charged into the embassy.
That big leap came from a pair of cocky World War II pilots. The two airmen–also in Galveston as it happens–made a bet to show how tough their planes were.
He calmed his fellow hostages and acted as an intermediary between the gunmen and the surrounding security forces, and ended up fighting the lead assailant on the floor of a gas-filled room as the SAS stormed the building.