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At least 10 of the Greatest Prison Escapes Ever  
BESTS 

Tags: jail, escape, prison, free, arrest, prisoner, break, out, how to, top 10

These are some of the greatest prison escapes of all time:

1.	Ghasr Prison, Tehran, Iran - Ross Perot hires a former special forces Colonel to rescue two of his employees at EDS from an Iranian prison, but before the escape plot is executed, Iranian revolutionaries storm the prison and the two escape in the confusion to a local hotel. The colonel runs into them there.
2.	States Model School, Pretoria, Natal - When South African fighters ambushed a British armored train they captured a British war correspondent for the Morning Post. The new captive was the brave (some would say foolhardy) and adventurous son of a British lord. Within 30 days, he escaped the school which he was imprisoned, stowed away on board a train, slipped into Portuguese East Africa, and made international headlines. Within a year, the former prisoner of the Boers had returned to England and embarked on a political career that landed him a seat in Parliament. It also eventually got him a spot at 10 Downing Street, where he served as prime minister of Britain during World War II. His name, of course, was Winston Churchill.
3.	Yakutsk, Siberia - Among Stalin's imprisoned Polish was cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz. While in Siberia, the resourceful Rawicz befriended the camp commissar’s wife, and with her help, he and six other prisoners managed to escape during a blinding snowstorm. A journey of epic proportions followed. A Polish teenage girl who had escaped her own camp joined Rawicz’s band, and the ragtag group skirted Lake Baikal, slipped over into Mongolia, traversed the Gobi Desert, and crossed the Himalayas. After a journey of 4,000 miles, the Polish officer and his four fellow survivors staggered into British-controlled India, finally free.
4.	Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia -Of all the break-out attempts at Libby, the most successful (and most elaborate) was masterminded by Colonel Thomas E. Rose. Using makeshift tools, he and a few fellow inmates tunneled down through a chimney, out of the prison’s rat-infested cellar, underneath a vacant lot, and up into a shed some 50 feet away. Confident in his secretive route, the colonel returned to the prison on February 9, 1864, and led 15 other prisoners through the narrow tunnel and out into Richmond’s unsuspecting streets. Encouraged by Rose’s success, 93 other prisoners quickly squirmed their way to freedom. Of those, an impressive 59 eventually returned to Union lines, making it the largest prison escape of the war. Although two officers drowned in the attempt, and the rest were recaptured, the Confederates couldn’t help being impressed by their enemy’s feat. The Richmond Examiner praised Rose’s “scientific tunnel” and declared his breakout to be an “extraordinary escapade.”
5.	Alcatraz, San Francisco, California - Frank Morris, John Anglin, and John’s brother Clarence escaped the inescapable "Rock". With the assistance of fellow inmate Allen West, the three men worked for months to carefully enlarge the vent holes in their cells to clear a way to the prison’s roof. On June 11, 1962, after leaving carefully crafted dummy heads in their beds to fool prowling guards, they slipped out of their cells and, under the cover of darkness, reached the island’s rocky shore. Relying on rafts made of their prison raincoats, Morris and the Anglin brothers entered the cold waters of San Francisco Bay to paddle for the mainland. The following morning, Alcatraz guards discovered their absence and a massive manhunt ensued. But the three convicts were never re-captured. Although the FBI eventually concluded that they must have drowned, their bodies were never recovered. The resulting “what if” scenarios spawned the 1979 Clint Eastwood movie Escape from Alcatraz and, less direct
6.	British prisoners in a German POW camp during WWII - They used a gymnastic vaulting horse (big enough to fit a man inside) and pretended to be practicing gymnastic jumps in the yard. At first they even topple over the horse so that the guards could see that there was nothing underneath. Later they brought a man inside the horse and he would start digging. All the jumping masked the noise of the digging.
7.	Tower of London, England - In the late 1500s, a Jesuit priest named John Gerard was incarcerated at the Tower of London, which served as a jail for political prisoners. At the time, Catholicism was illegal and practicing priests were guilty of treason. During his imprisonment, Gerard wrote letters to supporters on the outside, hiding secret clues written in invisible ink made from diluting orange juice. He also wrote to another prisoner, John Arden, who was held in a separate jail in the Tower. The two conspired to escape with the help of friends and a sympathetic guard. On October 4, 1597, Gerard hacked away at stones around the door to his cell. After getting out, he snuck past guards and reached a high wall overlooking a moat, where he met up with Arden. A supporter in a boat waited below. The person in the boat threw a rope up to Gerard and Arden, who tied it to nearby cannon. They inched down the rope into the boat and rowed to safety.
8.	The Leads, Venice, Italy - Giacomo Casanova, was arrested for repeatedly committing adultery in the 1700s. Following one arrest, he was incarcerated at a prison in Venice known as the Leads, after the lead that coated its walls. Supposedly, Casanova found an iron rod in the yard, fashioned it into a digging tool and began digging a tunnel from his cell to the outside. His work was soon worthless, however, because prison guards moved him to a new cell. Afraid guards would be watching him, he asked the prisoner in the next cell, a monk, to use the tool to dig a tunnel between their two cells and another tunnel from the monk's cell to the outdoors. The monk agreed. Both prisoners crawled out through these tunnels and managed to escape the Leads, using the same iron tool to force open doors and gates.
9.	the "prison" of Slavery - Henry "Box" Brown was born a slave in 1816 in Virginia. After a slave owner in North Carolina purchased his wife and children in 1849, Brown began plotting his escape. Brown asked a carpenter friend to build him a box that was 3 feet long, 2-and-a-half feet deep and 2 feet wide. On the outside, Brown wrote "right side up with care" and squeezed himself inside. He had friends ship him to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Brown had water in the box and breathing holes, but the more than 24-hour journey was undoubtedly grueling – at one point, the box was turned so that he was on his head. After he arrived in Philadelphia, Brown was free. He became an active member of the abolitionist movement, and the box itself became a symbol of the inhumanity and injustice of slavery.
10.	Brushy Mountain State Prison, Tennessee - The convicted killer of Martin Luther King Jr. escaped the Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee in June 1977. He and six other convicts used a makeshift ladder to scale the 14-foot-high walls while guards were distracted by a fight other prisoners staged about 200 yards away. One man was shot on the wall, but Ray got away, eluding authorities for 54 hours before his recapture. The Washington Post called it "one of the greatest manhunts in modern memory." Ray was already known for his prison break attempts. At the time of King's murder, he was an escaped convict. Before the ladder incident, he had two unsuccessful escape attempts. Ray died in April 1998 while serving a 99-year prison sentence.

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