#003 | The Most Amazing Prison Escapes in History | English Learning for Curious Minds Podcast

hello and welcome to the English learning for curious minds podcast by Leonardo English I'm Alistair budge and today we are going to be talking about prison escapes and looking at some of the most amazing prison escapes in history prison is evidently not the kind of place where most people want to stay and so it goes without saying for as long as prisons have existed well people have tried to escape from them some of our I should probably not say heroes but let's say protagonists so some of our protagonists in today's episode used all sorts of

ingenious tricks including wooden pistols dummies yoga and even a hockey sticks to escape from prison and I'll reveal exactly how they did it shortly before we get right into it though I want to remind those of you listening on Apple podcasts and Spotify or wherever you might get your podcasts that you can get the transcript and key vocabulary for this podcast on the website so that's Leonardo English comm there's also a load of information on how to use podcasts to learn English over on the blog so that's well worth a look if you haven't done

so already okay without further ado let's take a look at five or the most amazing prison escapes in history firstly John Herbert Dillinger jr. born in 1903 if that name is ringing a bell for you well you may remember him from the 2009 film Public Enemies with Johnny Depp Dillinger was a notorious bank robber in the Great Depression era when he was caught in 1934 after having robbed a bank naturally he was held at the Lake County Jail in Indiana local police were so proud of this jail that they declared it to be escape-proof well

it didn't prove to be quite as escape-proof as they had hoped shortly after being put in jail he carved a fake pistol out of a shelf that was in his cell and then proceeded to take 17 hostages he lured the guards back to his cell block and then he locked them in his own cell only then was he able to force his way out but if you remember the film this freedom wasn't to last for long for Dillinger and he was killed later on that year in a shootout our second escape comes from Korea from

a prisoner called choi gap-bok now one way you can get out of a prison cell is through brute force so forcing open the bars and breaking free choi gap-bok had another idea which was to make himself so flexible that he could wriggle out he was an expert in yoga and spent countless hours making his body as flexible as possible his aim was to squeeze himself out of the tiny hole at the bottom of the door that was used to give prisoners food if you can imagine what this looks like it's one of those really small

holes at the bottom of the door where they passed the food through tiny right this hole was only 15 centimeters tall and 45 centimeters wide while the guards were sleeping he managed to wriggle out and the entire escape took only 34 seconds and he was finally free it wasn't to last though as he was arrested just six days later and it goes without saying that the next cell he was put in had a much smaller food hole our third story of escape I should point out is still debated and we don't know whether the prisoners

actually managed to escape and are now living in some far corner of the world with new identities or whether they perished in the Bay of San Francisco if you haven't guessed it I'm talking about the escape from the maximum security prison two kilometers offshore from San Francisco Alcatraz if you've seen the cult film of the rock you'll know what I'm talking about it's a maximum-security prison on a rock in ice-cold shark-infested waters with very fast tides so certainly no easy feat to escape from in any case in June 1962 three prisoners escaped and then mysteriously

went missing these prisoners Frank Morris John Anglin and his brother Clarence spent two years digging a tunnel through the walls and building a raft made out of raincoats to sail to freedom on the night of the escape they placed dummies so fake bodies fake copies of themselves they placed them in their bed to trick the guards and it worked it wasn't until the next morning that the guards realize that they had gone later on parts of the raft as well as some of the men's personal belongings were found in the bay of San Francisco leading

investigators to conclude that the men had drowned in the escape however their bodies have never been found and there are those that still believe that the men made it out alive and are now in hiding I don't really know what happened and it's certainly more intriguing to think that they did manage to get away and are now sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere rather than in a cold watery grave any list of great prison escapes wouldn't be complete without well the great escape forever immortalized in the 1963 film of the Great Escape the escape from

Stalag Luft 3 during world war ii must go down as one of history's most amazing prison escapes in 1943 after having been captured by the Germans Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger bushel thought up a plan for a mass escape from the prison where he was being held with other British and Commonwealth M men who were fighting in the Allied air force it's a remarkable escape for many reasons but mainly for the sheer amount of people involved more than 600 prisoners were involved in the preparation and 76 managed to escape now the prisoners dug three

long tunnels from their huts under the camp past two sets of barbed wire and out to the treeline the idea behind having three tunnels was that if one of them was discovered well there would be another two and the prison guards would hardly guess that the prisoners were working on more than one tunnel these tunnels were very deep down around 9 metres below the surface they were supported with wood from the prisoners beds with over half of all the wood from the beds being removed it's a miracle that the guards didn't discover this these tunnels

were over a hundred metres long but only 67 meters wide this meant that they had to create air pumps which were built out of random items such as hockey sticks and food tins it was an ingenious plan and despite numerous problems that they encountered along the way 76 men were able to escape on the night of the 24th of March 1944 even though it was an incredibly brave escape it wasn't to last for long and 73 of the 76 men who escaped were captured and 50 were then executed by the Gestapo if you haven't seen

it the Great Escape is a fantastic film well worth of watch watch it with English subtitles of course and you'll probably see that the accents are a little different to the kind of accents that you might hear today last but not least we have a more recent escape from none other than Mexican drug lord Joaquin el chapo guzman now a chapo could probably appear in this list more than once as he has quite a record when it comes to prison escapes in 2001 while in the maximum-security prison Puente Grande he managed to escape in a

laundry basket pushed by a prison worker after this first escape a total of 78 people have been implicated in helping him including the director of the prison but escaping doesn't come cheap it's it estimated that this prison escape cost a jappo around two and a half million dollars however is the second escape that I think is more impressive while at fed that I associated array of a peon Center number one another maximum-security prison as Jabba managed to evade the authorities and again breakout how does he do it well his associates had dug a tunnel from

inside a construction site about one and a half kilometres away ten meters underground all the way up to the prison and into Guzman cell the tunnel appeared in quiz man's shower area which was the only part of the cell that the security cameras couldn't see he was last seen at eight minutes to nine going into the shower area when he didn't reappear for 25 minutes guards decided look for him and only then they found the entrance to the tunnel but it was too late they found a motorbike in the tunnel with which they expect he

used to escape so where is their Chapel now well if you weren't aware he's back in prison and it looks like this time it might be for good he was extradited to the United States in January of 2017 and is currently at ADX Florence the most secure supermax prison in America despite the fact that he seems to be a bit of an expert at escaping from prison well I wouldn't fancy his chances right now okay that's a quick look at the most amazing prison escapes in history we've learned that you can get out of prison

with a fake pistol if you're really good at yoga if you make some dummies of yourself if you have six hundred men and can do a large tunnel and if you have two and a half million dollars to spare to bribe the guards but escaping from prison is certainly not easy and if our examples are anything to go by you don't manage to stay out for long even if you do manage to escape as always if you have thoughts questions suggestions or things you didn't quite understand then do let us know you can send us

a message on the website that's Leonardo English comm or on Facebook or Instagram if you've enjoyed the podcast then do tell a friend colleague family member or random person in the street the more people know about the podcast the more listeners we'll have in the better it'll get you've been listening to English learning for curious minds by Leonardo English with me Alastair Bunch I'll catch you in the next episode you