Frogblast shows that pilot overloading is possible with hacked shenanigans, February 2003:
http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive7.pl?read=195091

Frogblast snatches the banshee in coop, legitimately, Frebruary 2003:
http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive7.pl?read=195462

A thread is created for speculation on how it might be done single-player, including someone saying that went as far as trying it, November 2003:
http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive11.pl?read=333200

Juggertrout posts a video made by a friend, showing a person flying a banshee in a single-player window on The Maw. Object overloading and snatch not shown, so everyone is all "lol wtf." June 2004:
http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive15.pl?read=439193

Ducain posts video actually demonstrating the full trick four days later. June 2004:
http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive15.pl?read=440813
The related video is still easy to find:
http://bungiemedia.com/archives/bansheeSP.mov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98yO0tprcv8

Then, after a rather long intermission, last month:
http://halo.bungie.org/news.html?item=41473

...over 12 years it's gone from hacked Xbox, to coop overloading, to four hours of SP overloading, to eighty minutes of SP overloading, and finally to someone just chucking a plasma grenade at the banshee.