- [Narrator] Be honest, have
you ever stolen something? Maybe you snuck your sibling's phone to play games without them knowing, or maybe you swiped a pack
of cookies from the store. These might be small indiscretions, but compared to some things that've been stolen throughout history, they're downright pathetic. I mean, what's a pack of cookies compared to an entire house, a giant ship, or even a skyscraper. Yeah, get ready to be schooled
in the art of stealing, as we take a look at even
more of the biggest things that have ever been stolen. (soft music) Tanks a lot. If I could drive any vehicle
on earth, it'd be a tank. They're huge, they're intimidating, and they've got great
big canons on the front; they're the perfect
vehicle, in my opinion. Of course, I'd need the right credentials. Not just anyone can
drive these war machines, though try telling that to Shawn Nelson. On the evening of May 17th, 1995, the citizens of San Diego who were commuting through the city witnessed the terrifying sight of a tank rolling down the streets. Former US Marine Shawn Nelson had swiped an M60A3 Patton tank from the California National Guard Armory and was rampaging
through the neighborhood. Now, an M60A3 tank is some 31 feet long and weighs more than 57 tons fully loaded. Luckily, this tank wasn't loaded, but still, not even the
biggest fire truck of the time would have been weighty enough
to stop this rolling monster. As Nelson ploughed through the streets, he destroyed vehicles, crushed lampposts, and rolled through barricades. Luckily, no one was seriously injured. Pursued by police, Nelson's
joyride came to a halt after he drove onto a road barrier, getting stuck in the process. Police opened the hatch and
ordered the thief to surrender, but Nelson refused, and then, well, let's just say he didn't survive the removal process. The danger was over, but
how did he steal a tank from the National Guard Armory, a facility surrounded by
eight-foot chain link fences topped with three runs of barbed wire to stop trespassers from entering? Not to mention all the
military personnel on site. Well, that evening, the
armory's gates were unsecured because the personnel were working late. At 6:30 PM, Nelson simply drove into the compound completely uncontested, before breaking the locks on not one, not two, but
three different tanks before starting the M60A3. At 6:45, he crashed through the gates and rolled onto his rampage. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder what my tax
money is actually doing. Empire State of Crime. We always hear about robbers
making off with phones, jewelry, and cash. Pfft. Pedestrian. How about a building? And
not just any building. Back in 2008, the New York Daily News pulled off one of the
biggest heists in US history, by stealing the most iconic
skyscraper in America, the Empire State Building. Before you ask, no, the
reporters didn't heave the 1,400-feet-tall tower away. Instead, they stole it through
the magic of paperwork. Journalists from the News
submitted fake documents to the city's clerk's office, seeking to transfer the
Empire State Building into their hands. The deed had the name
Nelots Properties LLC, which, as some of you may have noticed, is stolen spelled backwards. If that wasn't cheeky enough, they listed "King Kong" star Fay Wray and infamous bank robber Willie Sutton as witness and notary. Just 90 minutes later,
the Empire State Building was legally transferred from
Empire State Land Associates to the fictitious Nelots
company owned by the newspaper. Don't worry, the reporters
didn't turn the building into their own personal penthouse. The very next day, they
returned the $2 billion building to its rightful owners. What was the reason for
this elaborate stunt? The best kind of reason: to prove a point. The newspaper aimed to
expose a glaring flaw in the city's register office. Clerks didn't need to
cross-check information, leading to all sorts of chaos in the way the city
documented deeds, mortgages, and other transactions. The Daily News uncovered
cases where criminals, pretending to be long-dead home owners, snagged fake property deeds and walked away with
thousands in mortgage cash. Interesting. If you'll excuse me, I
need to send some forms off to New York City's registry office regarding a new Be Amazed New York office. All this thievery is making me nervous. Do you know what you should do before some bandit swipes your mouse? Click those like and
subscribe buttons of course. Alright, what have we got next? Son of a Beach. There's nothing I like better than a trip to the coast,
swimming in the sea, munching on an ice cream, swiping an entire beach
for the illegal sand trade. Wait, what? Yeah, back in 2008 in Trelawny, Jamaica, a whole beach was stolen overnight. Whoa. They must've been trying to
build one big sandcastle. The sandy-fingered thieves
made a clean getaway with an estimated 500
truckloads full of sand from Coral Springs beach. Rather suspiciously, no
eyewitnesses have come forward, so how it was stolen is a mystery. The thieves may have done it by hand, like these sand miners in Ghana, or it could've been pinched
by giant excavators. An excavator can dig up to
1,000 cubic yards per day, and that's the equivalent of
1,000 hot tubs worth of sand. Since the heist, there have been no signs
of the suspects or sand. With 1,300 feet of missing earth, the sheer scale of the heist has led some to point
fingers at hotel companies. Some suggest that these companies took the sand to refurbish
their own private beaches, or to thwart the competition by preventing rival resorts
from opening on their turf. The level of corruption may reach the highest law in the land. Even police and politicians have been accused of colluding
with the beach burglars. You see, sand thieves are nasty customers. Activists, journalists,
and government officials who've dared to stand against them often end up vanishing just
as mysteriously as the sand. This grainy stuff isn't
just for digging in. It's the main ingredient in
cement, concrete, and glass. A global sand shortage has unleashed violent black market gangs who've cleared away rivers,
beaches, and even small islands, destroying habitats and
wildlife in the process. Sadly, the problem is expected to worsen as the world's population grows, along with the demand for infrastructure. All of this over sand? That's gonna take me a while to process. Hijack Ahoy. The old saying goes: the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's certainly true for a cruise liner that was once stolen. Okay, it wasn't one of those
fancy, modern cruise ships, it was the Achille Lauro, which was technically
stolen way back in 1985. This Italian cruise ship was
82 feet in width at the beam, that's the ship's widest
point for us landlubbers, and stretched a colossal
642 feet in length. That's longer than the
Washington Monument is tall. How do you steal something like that? Surely you can't just
hijack a ship that large by carrying it away? That'd be far too obvious, and it'd require hundreds
of helicopters to achieve. Even steering it off course
would draw attention. It's way too big to
steal, or so you'd think. On October 7, shortly after setting sail
from Alexandria, Egypt, a steward found four men trying to clean petrol
off their machine guns with a hairdryer. These guys had been
masquerading as passengers, but were in fact hijackers,
there to seize the boat. Upon being found out,
they sprang into action, charging into the dining hall, claiming there were 20
armed men on board the ship. There were only 97 passengers on board, most of whom were elderly or disabled. The other 651 tourists on board the ship had stayed behind in Egypt
to sightsee Alexandria, so there wasn't much the rest could do against the four militants. The hijackers radioed Syrian authorities demanding the release
of their imprisoned pals and permission to dock in a Syrian port. Syria never replied. Things were beginning to
turn ugly when, on October 9, a terrorist commander arranged for the Lauro to dock in Egypt. After trying and failing to escape, the terrorists were taken into custody with the help of US and Italian
authorities, and convicted. The Lauro's luck didn't
improve after resuming service. In 1994, she caught fire off
the coast of Somalia and sank. Man, that boat just
hit a wave of bad luck. Clergy Quandary. We all have that fear that a thief is going to break into our home and make off with our belongings. But what if the thief
made off with your home? Back in 2021 in Luton, UK,
this exact scenario happened. Mike Hall was a vicar who'd been working away
from his Luton home, fulfilling his holy duties in North Wales. In August, out of the
blue, his neighbors called, telling him that they'd seen
an intruder in his home. Understandably worried,
Hall rushed back to Luton, only to find that the keys to
his front door no longer fit. A stranger opened the door,
and Hall forced his way in. Once inside, the vicar found
his Luton house looted, the plaster on his walls stripped bare. It turned out the stranger was a builder, who was renovating his home. He demanded an explanation, because he hadn't ordered
any building works. That's when someone else appeared and told the confounded clergyman that the house they were
all standing in was his, and that it was the vicar
who was trespassing. It turned out, while Hall was away, thieves had broken into
his home through a window and changed the locks. Then these cunning fraudsters
used a fake driving license to impersonate the reverend, created a bogus bank account in his name, and phoned up solicitors,
claiming to be Hall. They instructed them to
sell the house for £131,000, a little over $150,000, way below the house's real market value, so that it'd sell quickly. Consequently, the new owners
now legally possessed the home, and there was nothing the police could do. It sounds stranger than fiction, but as I'm making this video right now, the case is still ongoing. No arrests have been made, and the new owners are still refusing to hand the house back
to its rightful owner. Jeez, that poor priest must
be living a hellish nightmare. School's Out Forever. Let's be honest, some days, we all wish our
school would just vanish, right? Well, for students at
Uitzig Secondary School in Cape Town, South Africa,
that wish came true. The story starts back in 2019
when the secondary school, that's the equivalent of
an American high school, had to close its doors. The neighborhood was taken
over by violent criminal gangs. People were being threatened and the school became a
target for terrible vandalism. Uitzig even tried
employing security guards, but the crooks chased them off, turning the area into a war zone, with staff and students often getting caught in the crossfire. Following this, the finances set aside for the school's repairs dried up fast, leading it to deteriorate
until it shut down completely. Back in the day, the
school used to show off an auditorium, cafeteria,
and five classroom blocks. Since then, thieves have pillaged the building brick by brick, leaving only a carcass of
what was once a school. Take a peek at Google Earth, and you'll see how the school disappeared in just six months. Everything from windows,
electrics, plumbing, and blackboards were scavenged. Rumor has it that they sold
the bricks for 31 cents each and $6.23 for every window. So, next time you find yourself
complaining about school, just be glad it didn't vanish
off the face of Google Earth. Cedar Later. Let's head over to
Vancouver Island, Canada, where the trees are as nice as the people, or at least they were until 2012. Back in May of that fateful year, park rangers from Carmanah
Walbran Provincial Park stumbled across an
800-year-old red cedar tree with a rather suspicious cut. Hmm, trees don't usually
have that, now do they? The tree had 80% of its
nine-foot-wide trunk severed, and park officials decided that it was unsafe to
leave the tree upright, so they cut it down. Then they left the tree to naturally decompose and
become a home for wildlife. Little did they know that this was all part of a devious plan. Once the officials had felled the tree, the illegal loggers who had sliced the tree
through in the first place returned and dragged it
away, piece by piece. Police were stumped as to
who the cedar stealers were and it's unlikely that they'll catch them, unless one of them starts selling some jumbo-sized wood carvings. The thieves managed to obscure the tire tracks left on the forest floor, leaving little evidence to work with. A western red cedar can
grow over 230 feet tall, so those poachers wouldn't have been your run-of-the-mill lumberjacks. They would've needed heavy-duty
equipment and giant trucks. A firewood salvager in a pickup truck just wouldn't have had the capacity to carry off an entire tree that size. Unfortunately, this type of tree poaching is becoming more popular. Since 1853, about 90%
of Vancouver Island's low elevation forests, where the largest, oldest
trees can be found, have been logged. What's the root of all
this tree swindling? Well, a large western red cedar can fetch thousands of dollars through the production
of shakes, shingles, and various other wood products. The park is pretty uninhabited and only protected by a few rangers, so the criminals could carry
out their heist uninterrupted. Y'know, there's plenty of other less environmentally damaging
heist opportunities out there. Those thieves should really branch out. Hoplift. Back in April, 2021, over in
Stoulton, Worcestershire, UK, rabbit breeder Annette Edwards woke up to find that her beloved
pet rabbit Darius had gone. Now, Darius wasn't any bog standard bunny, he held the Guinness World Record for being the biggest
rabbit on the planet. He was a Continental Giant rabbit, weighed in at a colossal 35 pounds, and measured in at an
unreal 4 foot, 3 inches from paw to paw. That makes this bunny
two-and-a-half times as heavy as a standard bowling ball, and about as long as an average eight-year-old
child is tall. To support his huge size, he
ate some 11 carrots a day. That's about 4,000 carrots a year. That's the same with me if you replace the carrots with burgers and a year with a month. Anyway, Edwards, who specializes in the Continental Giant
breed, was devastated. She even offered over $1,200 as a reward for his safe return, before doubling it to
over $2,700, to no avail. So, who stole this giant rabbit? A giant fox? Probably not. Edwards believes the abduction of Darius was masterminded by human thieves, because to reach Darius's hutch, they would've had to
navigate a neighboring field and bust open the bolts. Visitors used to come and
take pictures with Darius, so many people knew the
layout of Edwards' home. The thieves likely targeted him because his hutch was away
from the other rabbits, which are guarded by dogs,
making him an easy catch. In his prime, Darius was a
sire rabbit used for breeding. Although, when he was
stolen at the age of 12, he was too old for any of that nonsense. So what would someone even
want with this giant rabbit? Well, there is one
unsettling internet theory. At the peak of his record-breaking fame, Darius was reportedly insured
for an unreal $1.6 million, had his own agent, and
traveled with a bodyguard. Now, Continental Giant rabbits only tend to live until
they're about 5 years old, so at 12, Darius wasn't just an old man, he was an ancient man. Like a lot of insurance clauses, if a pet passes away from natural causes, nothing can be claimed. But if it's stolen, or looks
like there's foul play, then there's usually
something to be gained. Hmm. Now, I'm not hopping to any conclusions, but what do you guys think
happened to this big old bunny? Let me know down in the comments below. Penny Pincher. I've always got a few loose
coins jingling in my pocket, but imagine lugging around this behemoth, the Canadian Big Maple Leaf. The prodigious penny was 1.2 inches thick and 20.8 inches in diameter. That's twice as big as a dinner plate. It was made from pure 24-carat gold, and weighed in at an incredible 22 pounds, giving it a value of $4.3 million. Now, that's a coin that could
literally break the bank. One side showcased Queen Elizabeth II; on the other was Canada's
national symbol, the maple leaf, hence its name. Issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007, it proudly held the Guinness World Record for the largest gold coin until 2011, when a one-ton Australian
coin outdid them. All was well in the world of
oversized coins until 2017, when the Big Maple Leaf coin
was, you guessed it, stolen. It was on display at the
Bode Museum in Berlin, when one night, four audacious robbers
pulled off their heist. Three of the four climbed
onto adjacent train tracks. Using a ladder as a makeshift bridge, they broke into the museum
through a third-floor window with the help of a shady security guard. The thieves then smashed through
a bullet-proof glass case and made off with the coin using a wheelbarrow and a skateboard. Really, a skateboard? Sorry, I just assumed that
a heist of this magnitude would require advanced equipment rather than random stuff you'd find in just about anybody's garage. Anyway, an investigation was opened, and the four men were eventually arrested. It was gold particles in their getaway car and on their clothes that led detectives to deduce that the coin was cut into
pieces or melted down and sold. Another clue came from
one of the thieves' phones having an internet
history full of searches on how to break down gold pieces. Huh. In court, three of the four men were found guilty and imprisoned, while the fourth was acquitted. I hope after this, those
robbers start seeing cents. No Sphinx Off My Nose. The Great Sphinx of Giza is
an iconic Egyptian landmark. Depicting a mythological creature with a lion's body and a human's face, it's as majestic as it is mysterious. Despite its fame, no one's entirely sure on who built the Sphinx, though most agree it was King
Khafre of the 4th dynasty, which'd put its construction
around 2500 BCE. But an even greater mystery
is what happened to its nose. At some point in history, the beast would've possessed
a three-foot-wide sniffer, until it was intentionally
chiseled away and stolen. Talk about happening right
under your, well, nose. Over the years, people have come up with all sorts of theories
as to what happened to it. A popular legend is that in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers blew the thing off with cannon fire. However, most archeologists turn their nose up at this myth, as it contradicts drawings from 1737 by Danish explorer Frederic Louis Norden, who depicted the statue
without its schnoz. Another story tells of Sufi
Muslim Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr. In 1378, he supposedly saw local peasants make offerings to the
Sphinx for a good harvest. Enraged, al-Dahr cut away at the face as an act of iconoclasm. We can pull the plug on this theory too, since research suggests that the hooter was pilfered between the
3rd and 10th centuries AD, making al-Dahr's story too late. All in all, we probably will never know what happened to the creature's snout. I'm just surprised that in
over 4,000 years without a nose it hasn't as-sphinx-iated. Room Rustlers. Okay, so far we've heard about
houses being absconded away, but what about a room? I'm not talking about any old room either, I'm talking about the Amber Room. Dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, it was a series of stunning gold-leafed panels adorned with mosaics. Not surprisingly valuable, modern estimates put its worth somewhere between $145 to $290 million. Originally created by the German baroque
sculptor, Andreas Schluter, in 1701, he fashioned it for the Prussian royal court
from 6.6 tons of amber. Imagine all the dinosaurs he
could've cloned from that. Eventually, it went on to display
at the Berlin City Palace, owned by the Prussian empire,
now modern-day Germany. In 1716, Frederick Wilhelm gifted the room to Peter the Great as a sign of friendship between their two countries. Sure enough, by 1755,
the room found its way to Catherine Palace in Leningrad, Russia. All was going well until World War II came and ruined everything, as World
War II has a tendency to do. In 1941, German forces
stormed through Russia making their way to Leningrad. Curators in the palace
tried hiding the room by covering it in plain wallpaper. But their plan failed, and the invading soldiers
ransacked the palace and in 36 hours, the
room was stripped bare. The panels were loaded into crates and transported to Konigsberg Castle, where the room was reassembled. The German government believed that, since the room was German-made,
it belonged in Germany. Things didn't get much
better for the Amber Room. In 1944, RAF planes bombed Konigsberg, and the room was considered destroyed. While the original may be gone forever, the tale doesn't end there. In 1979, the Soviet government commissioned a replica of the room, including all the
painstakingly inlaid details. After 24 years, with partial
funding from Germany, the project was completed
at a cost of $11 million. The reconstructed Amber Room was then installed in
the Catherine Palace. Now there's a room that's worth
its weight in gold or amber. ARRR-jack. Avast, me 'earties, for now we be sailing in the
scurvy shores of treachery. Sorry, pirate voice is
murder on the vocal chords. It was all because we're now taking a look at the most dastardly pirate
of them all, Edward Teach, or as he's better known, Blackbeard. In the late 1710s, Blackbeard
terrorized the Atlantic on his ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. The boat measured 24.6 feet at the beam and a whopping 103 feet in length. It was armed to the teeth with 40 cannons, a crew of around 124 scallywags, and plenty of room for treasure. Truth be told, Blackbeard's fearsome
reputation preceded him, and most of his victims
offered up their booty without a fight. But how in the heck did
he obtain this ship? Did he get it on sail? No. A true blaggard,
Blackbeard stole the vessel near the island of
Martinique in the Caribbean in November of 1717. Before that, it was known as La Concorde, a French slaving ship. The French captain and crew, outnumbered and weakened
from a grueling journey across the Atlantic, surrendered to the formidable pirate who commandeered the ship. - Look at me. I'm the captain now. - [Narrator] Blackbeard kept
10 members of the French crew and set the rest free, including
those who'd been enslaved. Maybe he wasn't all bad, I guess. Yet, everything went pear shaped for the Queen Anne in June 1718, when the ship ran aground on
a shoal off North Carolina. Blackbeard abandoned the ship, making off with all the loot
and a few of his favorite crew. While the captain met his end
at the hands of pirate hunters in November that year, the fate of his stolen vessel
was a mystery until 1996, when a shipwreck was discovered
around the same area. For over 15 years, it was
excavated and studied, and in 2011, it was confirmed
to be Blackbeard's ship. That's it. Unfortunately, my recording booth has also been stolen with me inside. Looks like I have no choice but to make a part three of this series. If you'd be down with that, be sure to let me know
in the comments below, and thanks for watching. (mellow music)
