The Great Maple Syrup Heist
In 2011, thieves broke into a warehouse in Quebec and stole around $18 million worth of maple syrup from Canada’s strategic maple syrup reserve.
Yes. Canada has a strategic maple syrup reserve.
The criminals slowly removed barrels of syrup and replaced them with water in an attempt to avoid detection.
Eventually, investigators noticed something was wrong when workers tried moving a barrel and realised it was unexpectedly light.
The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa
When people think of the Mona Lisa, they usually imagine one of the most famous paintings in the world. Ironically, it became even more famous because somebody stole it.
In 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, an employee at the Louvre, simply hid inside the museum overnight.
The next morning, he removed the painting from the wall, concealed it beneath his clothing and walked out.
The painting remained missing for over two years before finally being recovered.
The Corpse Theft Industry
Victorian Britain had a serious problem.
Medical schools needed bodies for anatomical study. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough legal sources available.
The solution? Crime.
“Resurrectionists” became notorious for digging up freshly buried corpses and selling them to medical institutions.
Imagine visiting a graveyard and discovering that somebody had stolen your deceased relative.
The practice became so widespread that families often hired guards to watch graves overnight.
Some even installed iron cages over burial sites to prevent theft.
The Man Who Tried to Steal a Country
In 1856, an American adventurer named William Walker decided that the normal rules of geopolitics didn’t apply to him.
Rather than becoming involved in politics through ordinary means, Walker gathered a small army and invaded Nicaragua.
Amazingly, it worked.
For a brief period, he actually became president.
The situation eventually collapsed and Walker was removed from power, but the fact that somebody managed to invade a country and temporarily take control of it feels completely absurd.
The World’s Dumbest Bank Robber
In 1995, a man named McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks in broad daylight without wearing any disguise.
Why?
Because he believed that covering his face with lemon juice would make him invisible to security cameras.
Apparently, Wheeler knew that lemon juice could be used as invisible ink and somehow concluded that the same principle applied to surveillance footage.
He was arrested almost immediately.
His confused reaction reportedly inspired psychologists to study how people can dramatically overestimate their own knowledge.
The Man Who Stole an Entire Beach
You’d think stealing a beach would be impossible. You’d be wrong.
In 2008, thieves in Jamaica somehow managed to remove approximately 500 truckloads of sand from a beach.
Nobody noticed until the beach was largely gone.
Imagine waking up one morning and discovering somebody had stolen part of the coastline.
The Gardner Museum Heist
In 1990, two men disguised as police officers arrived at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The guards made one incredibly unfortunate decision and allowed them inside.
The “officers” immediately tied up the staff and spent over an hour calmly removing priceless artwork from the museum.
Among the stolen pieces were works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas.
The total value of the missing art is estimated to be hundreds of millions of pounds.
More than thirty years later, the paintings have never been recovered. The empty frames still hang in the museum today, waiting for the artwork to return.
The Antwerp Diamond Heist
In 2003, thieves targeted what was considered one of the most secure vaults in the world: the Antwerp Diamond Centre in Belgium.
The building was protected by multiple layers of security, including locks, heat detectors, motion sensors, magnetic fields and surveillance systems.
The thieves bypassed all of it. They spent months studying the security measures and planning the robbery.
When they finally struck, they escaped with diamonds, gold and jewellery worth tens of millions of pounds.
Investigators eventually identified members of the gang, but much of the stolen treasure has never been recovered.
Burke and Hare
In nineteenth-century Edinburgh, medical schools desperately needed bodies for anatomical research.
At first, Burke and Hare simply sold the bodies of people who had died naturally. Then they realised murder paid significantly better.
Rather than robbing graves, they began killing vulnerable people and selling the bodies directly to anatomists.
By the time they were caught, numerous victims had died.
The case horrified Britain and helped change laws regarding the supply of bodies to medical schools.
The Bank Robber Who Used His Own Name
In 2008, a man in Pennsylvania allegedly robbed a bank and handed the cashier a note demanding money.
Unfortunately for him, the note had been written on the back of paperwork containing his own name and address.
Police didn’t exactly have to launch an international manhunt.
The Thief Who Updated Facebook During a Burglary
Modern criminals occasionally forget that technology works both ways.
One burglar reportedly logged into Facebook while committing a robbery and forgot to log out afterwards. The victim later discovered the account still open on their computer.
Police suddenly had access to the suspect’s profile, photographs and personal information.
Which is probably not what Facebook’s founders imagined when they created the website.
The Criminal Who Googled Himself
After committing a crime, one suspect became curious about the investigation.
Very curious. Curious enough to repeatedly search for updates online.
Unfortunately, he conducted those searches using devices that investigators were already monitoring.
It’s generally not advisable to help the police track your interest in your own criminal activity.
The Everything Journal 
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