Crime & Heists
7 verified stories about crime & heists.
A Drug Lord Smuggled 4 Hippos Into Colombia. Now There Are Hundreds.
In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar illegally imported 4 hippos to his private zoo. After his death they were left behind - and they never stopped breeding. Colombia now has the largest wild hippo population outside Africa.
He Survived Dynamite and Ran 150 Miles in -40° Arctic Snow ❄️
In the bitter winter of 1931, Canadian Mounties surrounded Albert Johnson's frozen Yukon cabin. When he fired through the door, police threw twenty pounds of dynamite, completely blowing off the roof—yet Johnson survived and kept shooting from a dug-out trench. Disappearing into the blinding blizzard, he walked backwards through snowdrifts and masked his footprints in caribou herds to throw off trackers. Desperate, the Mounties launched history's first aerial manhunt before cornering the mysterious Mad Trapper on a frozen river.
He Survived Poison, Bullets, and a Frozen River.
Grigori Rasputin was poisoned, shot multiple times, beaten, and thrown into a frozen river in one single night in 1916. This is the true story of the mystic who wouldn't die.
A Whole Town Faked Wild West Shootouts for Tourists
In the 1870s, a Nevada railroad town was so peaceful it didn't even have a sheriff - so the whole town started faking Wild West shootouts for disappointed train tourists. This is the true story of Palisade, Nevada.
Four Students Broke Into Westminster Abbey to Steal a Stone
At Christmas 1950, four Glasgow University students - Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart - took the Stone of Destiny from under the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. It broke in two on the floor. A policeman chatted to two of them in their car without spotting the piece hidden inside. The stone turned up at Arbroath Abbey in April 1951, and none of them was ever prosecuted.
A Shoemaker Bought a Used Uniform and Took Over a Town Hall 🎖️
In October 1906, Wilhelm Voigt, a shoemaker and ex-convict, put on a captain's uniform pieced together from second-hand shops, stopped soldiers in the street and marched them into the town hall of Köpenick near Berlin. He arrested the mayor, had the town's cash handed over and walked off with it. He was soon caught and sentenced, then pardoned - the 'Captain of Köpenick'.
A Prison Built So No Two Inmates Could Meet 🏝️
the British finished a prison on India's Andaman Islands with 693 solitary cells arranged so no two inmates could ever see each other. Prisoners called crossing the sea to reach it Kala Pani - black water - because it meant losing everything they left behind.