Sunday, October 14, 2012

top 10 oddest things stolen alltime


10. Two Mini Trains

swiss-mini-train
Now, mini is a bit of an understatement here; both of these trains weighed just under a ton. The real thing that makes this odd though, is that there’s no apparent motive, only that the trains were there, taunting thieves by remaining offensively unstolen. Also it left onlookers stumped, as there was apparently no way the thieves could have loaded the trains, meaning it’s entirely possible they rode them away. Well, that’s the image I’m going with, because it’s much cooler that way.

9. Whole ATMs


An ATM is not only ridiculously heavy, it’s also set so securely into a wall that, if you crashed a car into it, the owner would be wiping the car-shaped smudge off of the front the next day. This hasn’t stopped the act of stealing them from becoming the recession’s hottest crime. The techniques range from simply lifting them up and stealing them with pure manpower, right up to using a clipboard to casually stroll in and take it without question. No group keeps an official tally on how many are stolen but, then again, more than one is probably too many.

8. A NASA Rocket Engine

nasa-rocket
NASA likes to keep a close tab on the things it creates, not because they’re valuable or anything (although they totally are), but because, if their tech fell into a rival country’s hands, it would kind of be a bad thing. So then, imagine their surprise when a Saturn RL-10 rocket engine popped up for sale on Ebay. The most curious part of this entire story is that this thing is huge, and was taken from one of the most secure places on Earth. Hollywood needs to get the number of whoever stole it, and just film him 14 times for the next installment of the Oceans Number series.

7. A Glacier

stolen-glacial-ice
They say the icecaps and glaciers are melting, something not helped by the fact that they’re also being stolen too. In what is perhaps the stupidest reason for destroying a landmark ever, a thief was caught with 5 tons of freshly carved glacier ice, that he was planning on selling to up-market bars for what must apparently be the best damn cocktails on Earth.

6. Guard Dogs

guard-dog-stolen
With all these tales of thievery, it’s nice to know we, as functioning members of society, have the ability to protect our property. Or rather, we could, if it wasn’t for the fact that guard dogs are also rather easy fodder for a determined crook. In a crime that’s surpisingly common, criminals have proven that nothing is safe from their sticky fingers, even the things we buy to protect our other things. Man, that’s pointless theft on an Inceptionlevel.






5. A Full-Size Train
ukraine-heritage-train
If you thought stealing two miniaturized trains was too simple, a couple of crooks in the Ukraine heard you and went one better: a full sized train. The thieves, using fake documents, strolled into the train yard and took the train, “probably” using a crane. When you’re not even sure what equipment people used to steal your 60-ton train, you were probably asking for it to be stolen all along.

4. A House

stealing-a-house
No footage of the stolen house exists, but we’re sure it happened exactly like this
Chances are that you’re reading this nestled in your own home, something that’s also apparently an easy target for a criminal. A Malaysian landlord discovered that his two-story house had been stolen when he went to collect rent. Of course the story itself is absolutely not funny, but the fact the police in the area were forced to report a “missing house” kind of is.

3. Thousands Of Litres Of Fuel

petrol-tanker
Now you’re probably reading this expecting that the thieves stole a petrol tanker of something, which is exactly what I thought while researching this. But no, it appears these thieves brought their own tanker, filled it completely with fuel and then simply drove off. It’s more embarrassing that doing so probably took hours and, at no point, did anyone watching realize a couple of men had filled a truck with almost a swimming pool’s worth of fuel, and then slowly drove off into the distance.

2. A Bridge

khabarovsk-bridge
Khabarovsk, Russia, was once home to a lovely 200-ton bridge, as well as one of the most unpronounceable names in history. Now though? All it has is the name. Said bridge was stolen without a trace, all in one night. Which isn’t the first time this has happened in Russia. While bridge theft is genuinely one of the crimes you can say is on the rise, you shouldn’t even be able to prosecute the criminals responsible, because they’re obviously Magneto.

1. Corn

lots-of-corn
With the people on this list stealing bridges and trains, corn seems like an odd number one. That is, until you realize determined criminals in Brazil stole 50 tons of it, from a moving train. They first greased the tracks (to slow the train down) and then broke in and stole all the precious corn it contained. The train also had sugar on it too, but these criminals were only after the corn. So they may have been amoral criminals, but they were health-conscious

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