By September 9, 1971, inmates at New York’s Attica Correctional Facility had seized control of the prison and taken guards hostage. Their extreme actions followed months of protests over inhumane conditions, including overcrowding, minimal food, harassment, lack of medical care ...read more
It was one of the most ingenious prison breaks of all time—if it worked. In 1962, inmates and bank robbers Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin vanished from Alcatraz, the federal island penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco. They had used sharpened spoons to bore ...read more
The gates of Folsom State Prison closed behind Gene Beley. It was 1968, and it was the first time the 28-year-old had ever been to state prison. “When you walk through there and they shut that door,” he says, “you realize that many men who have that happen never see their ...read more
Al Capone. Whitey Bulger. The list of Alcatraz prisoners reads like a litany of gangsters and hardened criminals. But in the 19th century, the infamous island was also home to 19 prisoners rarely found in maximum security cells: Hopi men. Their crime? Rebelling against plans to ...read more
Originally built as a naval defense fortification in the 1850s, the facility on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay housed military prisoners from 1861 to 1933, after which the U.S. Army transferred control to the Department of Justice. The new federal penitentiary on Alcatraz ...read more
1. The inmates who fled The Rock in a raft made from raincoats From 1934 to 1963, the U.S. penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay housed some of America’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and James “Whitey” ...read more
Around 10:30 pm. on the cold, moonless night of March 24, 1944, Johnny Bull slowly peeked his head out of the ground and filled his lungs with freedom as he breathed in the frigid air. The sweat-soaked prisoner of war had just poked away at the last nine inches of grass and dirt ...read more
When the train transporting the first Union prisoners of war to Andersonville finally exhaled after a week-long trip from Richmond, Virginia, its human cargo breathed a sigh of relief as well. The Union prisoners who arrived at Camp Sumter on February 24, 1864, had just survived ...read more
As reported by the Associated Press and NPR, David C. Cox’s wartime journey began after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the North Carolina native left college and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. After his graduation from flight school in July 1942, he ...read more
1. Anne Boleyn The second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn was twice a resident of the Tower of London—once as a queen-in-waiting and once as a condemned prisoner. Boleyn married Henry in 1533 after the English king defied the Roman Catholic Church and annulled his marriage to ...read more
On this day in 1943, a B-24 carrying U.S. airman and former Olympic runner Louis “Louie” Zamperini crashes into the Pacific Ocean. After surviving the crash, Zamperini floated on a raft in shark-infested waters for more than a month before being picked up by the Japanese and ...read more
Led by graduate student Kevin Chapman on the grounds of the Bo Ginn National Fish Hatchery near the town of Millen, the dig yielded roughly 200 objects used by inmates and guards at the Camp Lawton prison, including an improvised pipe, a tourniquet buckle, buttons and coins. ...read more
Prisoners riot and seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York. Later that day, state police retook most of the prison, but 1,281 convicts occupied an exercise field called D Yard, where they held 39 prison guards and employees ...read more
One of the most gruesome chapters in the story of America’s struggle for independence from Britain occurred in the waters near New York Harbor, near the current location of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. From 1776 to 1783, the British forces occupying New York City used abandoned or ...read more
The four-day revolt at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York, ends when hundreds of state police officers storm the complex in a hail of gunfire. Thirty-nine people were killed in the disastrous assault, including 29 prisoners and 10 prison ...read more
After spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky is released. The amnesty deal was arranged by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan at a summit meeting three months earlier. Scharansky was ...read more
On this day in 1961, the British newspaper The London Observer publishes British lawyer Peter Benenson’s article “The Forgotten Prisoners” on its front page, launching the Appeal for Amnesty 1961–a campaign calling for the release of all people imprisoned in various parts of the ...read more
On this day in 1945, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, (captured by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor, in the Philippines), is freed by Russian forces from a POW camp in Manchuria, China. When President Franklin Roosevelt transferred Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command in ...read more
On this day in 1942, the international humanitarian agency, the Red Cross, reveals that Japan has refused free passage of ships carrying food, medicine, and other necessities for American POWs held by Japan. In January 1941, the U.S. government requested that the American Red ...read more
Three U.S. prisoners of war, two of them African American, are released by the Viet Cong in a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The three men were turned over to Tom Hayden, a “new left” antiwar activist. U.S. officials in Saigon said that the released prisoners had been ...read more
A combined U.S. Air Force and Army team of 40 Americans–led by Army Colonel “Bull” Simons–conducts a raid on the Son Tay prison camp, 23 miles west of Hanoi, in an attempt to free between 70 and 100 Americans suspected of being held there. Planning for the mission–code-named ...read more
The release of U.S. POWs begins in Hanoi as part of the Paris peace settlement. The return of U.S. POWs began when North Vietnam released 142 of 591 U.S. prisoners at Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport. Part of what was called Operation Homecoming, the first 20 POWs arrived to a hero’s ...read more
U.S. Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. spends his 2,000th day in captivity in Southeast Asia. First taken prisoner when his plane was shot down on August 5, 1964, he became the longest-held POW in U.S. history. Alvarez was downed over Hon Gai during the first bombing raids against ...read more
The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) and American socialist Norman Thomas appeal to North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh on behalf of captured American pilots. The number of American captives was on the increase due to the intensification of Operation ...read more