What famous painting was stolen from the Louvre? 10 big heists exposed

Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko

People have always been drawn to stories of the impossible, and few tales spark more fascination than a daring heist. There’s something thrilling about the idea of guards, locks, and vaults being outwitted by clever minds with even stranger plans. Sometimes it’s a priceless masterpiece disappearing in broad daylight, other times it’s something as unexpected as maple syrup. From the ingenious to the downright bizarre, history is filled with thefts that sound more like adventure novels than real life. Let’s step into the shadows and explore some of the most astonishing heists ever carried out.

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Before she became the ultimate symbol of art itself, the Mona Lisa pulled off a vanishing act worthy of a magician. In 1911, a sneaky handyman slipped into the Louvre, spent the night hidden among the galleries, and the next morning walked out with Leonardo’s masterpiece tucked under his arm.

Paris was stunned. For two long years, all that remained was a blank space on the wall—and strangely enough, people flocked to the museum just to stare at the absence. When the painting finally resurfaced, the heist had transformed it from a celebrated portrait into a global icon, proving that sometimes disappearing from the public eye can make something even more valuable.

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In the heart of Antwerp’s diamond district in Belgium sat a vault so secure it was considered untouchable. Motion detectors, magnetic locks, heat sensors—every layer was designed like a fortress of light and steel. Yet in 2003, a band of thieves slipped past it all as if stepping through lace.

The robbers picked the locks with surgical precision, tricked cameras with clever decoys, and even masked their body heat to fool the sensors. By the time the heist was discovered, more than $100 million in diamonds and jewels had vanished into the night. What makes the story legendary is that most of the treasure has never resurfaced, leaving the world to wonder how the "heist of the century" was pulled off so cleanly.

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Picture this: a moonlit night in the quiet English countryside, the steady rhythm of a Royal Mail train echoing through the dark. Suddenly, the train screeches to a halt—robbers in masks have stopped it dead in its tracks. Inside, sacks stuffed with banknotes are waiting to be claimed. The gang managed to escape with £2.6 million—worth about £73.7 million today—, a sum that was never recovered.

Although they were captured a short time later, the audacity of the crime captured the world’s imagination, inspiring headlines, numerous books, and films. Even decades later, the Great Train Robbery of 1963 feels less like history and more like the plot of a thrilling adventure novel.

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High above the clouds, a mystery took flight. In 1971, a calm, neatly dressed passenger who gave the name D. B. Cooper handed a note to a flight attendant—he was hijacking the plane. His demands were unusual yet precise: $200,000 in small bills and four parachutes.

Once the ransom was delivered, the Boeing 727 lifted off again into a stormy night over the Pacific Northwest. Then came the moment that turned him into a legend: Cooper opened the rear stairway and leapt into the darkness, vanishing into the wind and rain. No trace of him—or the cash—was ever found. Decades later, his daring escape remains America’s favorite riddle in the sky.

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On a chilly March night in 1990, two men in police uniforms knocked politely on the side door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The guards, thinking it was routine business, let them inside. By the time the sun rose, the museum had been stripped of 13 masterpieces—including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas—worth an estimated half a billion dollars.

The strangest detail? The thieves left behind other valuable paintings, choosing their loot with puzzling precision. To this day, the crime remains unsolved, and the museum has kept the empty frames on the walls. Visitors still stop to stare, as if those blank outlines tell a story louder than the art itself: a mystery frozen in time.

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Legends linger long on island shores, and Bermuda has one that still stirs the imagination. In 1975, the Tucker’s Cross—a 22-karat gold cross set with brilliant emeralds—was stolen from a local museum. The artifact had been pulled from the depths of a centuries-old Spanish shipwreck, a jewel of history as much as of craftsmanship. Its disappearance was swift, its recovery nonexistent. Decades later, no trace has surfaced, ensuring the Tucker’s Cross remains one of the Caribbean’s most enduring unsolved mysteries.

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Who says a heist has to be about diamonds and cash? In Quebec, between 2011 and 2012, thieves quietly tapped into a warehouse and siphoned away nearly 3,000 tons of maple syrup—that’s over 6 million pounds of the sticky stuff.

Valued at around $18 million, it became known as "liquid gold." The thought is almost comical: breakfast pancakes crowned with a topping more valuable than some gemstones. Even the sweetest prize can tempt the cleverest crooks!

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In 1950, an ordinary winter night turned remarkable when a band of thieves, their faces hidden behind cheap Halloween masks, slipped into the Brink’s armored car depot in Boston. Moving with military precision, they bound the guards and hauled away $2.7 million in cash, checks, and money orders—worth more than $30 million in today’s money.

For years, the trail stayed ice cold, and the job was praised as flawless. So perfect was the plan that investigators dubbed it the "crime of the century," and it set the benchmark for every heist that followed.

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December 1978, New York’s JFK Airport. What began as just another shift in the cargo terminal suddenly shifted into crime lore. A crew of thieves bypassed security and stormed the vault, vanishing with roughly $5 million in cash and close to $1 million in glittering jewels.

The sheer audacity—pulling off a multimillion-dollar heist in one of the busiest airports in the world—left Americans both shocked and fascinated. Decades later, the Lufthansa robbery still ranks among the boldest airport crimes in history.

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Imagine pulling off one of the biggest bank heists in California history—only to be spoiled by a pizza party. That’s exactly what happened in 1972, when a group of burglars spent weeks digging a tunnel into the United California Bank in Laguna Niguel. Their prize was staggering: about $9 million in cash, worth more than $60 million in today’s money.

For a moment, it looked like the perfect crime. But after the adrenaline wore off, the crew sat down to celebrate with pizza, leaving greasy fingerprints on the plates. Those smudges became the breadcrumbs that led investigators right to them, proving that sometimes the smallest slip can topple the grandest scheme.

The day after us

Earth without humans: 11 things that happen when we’re gone

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What if every human vanished right now? For the sake of this thought experiment, let’s assume that there was no big war, no virus—just poof, gone. Nature wouldn’t hesitate to reclaim what we built. From silent cities to nuclear disasters, the world would start changing immediately. Here’s what would actually happen, and how fast, if people disappeared from Earth.

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Power plants need constant maintenance. Without humans, fossil fuel stations would shut down within just a few hours. Backup generators at nuclear and hydro plants might last a couple more days, but without human oversight, even they’d fail.

Eventually, power grids would collapse worldwide, and complete darkness would fall on cities within a day or two.

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Pumps in underground transit systems like NYC’s run nonstop to keep out water. Without maintenance (and more importantly, power), those pumps would stop working in just a couple of days.

By the end of the first week, tunnels would begin flooding, damaging infrastructure, and washing out entire underground networks.

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Most domestic animals rely entirely on humans for food, water, and shelter. Dogs might form feral packs, but millions—especially indoor pets—would eventually die of starvation.

Livestock like cows and chickens would perish or become easy prey, disrupting rural food chains. However, within a few generations, some could revert to free-roaming behavior, similar to their wild ancestors.

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Without humans, nuclear power plants would quickly become major hazards to all surviving life. Most reactors would automatically enter into safe mode and shut down within hours, as automated systems detect the loss of the electrical grid.

However, cooling systems require active maintenance. Within a short time, without intervention, reactor cores would begin to overheat. Multiple Fukushima-style meltdowns could occur, releasing radioactive material into the air, soil, and water across entire regions.

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Salt, moisture, and wind would destroy most human-made bridges within decades. Without protective coatings, steel corrodes and load-bearing cables weaken over time.

Even iconic structures like the Golden Gate Bridge would likely collapse within 100 years. In contrast, ancient Roman structures and other archaeological remains that have already endured for millennia could survive for many centuries more, barring major seismic events or other natural disasters.

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Many animal populations would thrive without humans suppressing them. Species once hunted or crowded out would reclaim territory.

Wolves, bears, deer, and even predators like big cats could return to their former ranges, reshaping ecosystems quickly.

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Plants would break through pavement and reclaim roadways within a few years—something nature wastes no time doing, as we can see in any abandoned roads or areas today.

Tree roots and erosion would be the first to crack and crumble concrete and asphalt. And without vehicles to maintain wear patterns, roads would soon disappear under grasses, shrubs, and eventually forest.

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Like many human-made structures, dams require active monitoring to prevent erosion, cracking, and overflow. Within a few decades, silt buildup and unchecked water flow would cause many to breach or collapse.

The resulting floods would be catastrophic, reshaping river valleys and floodplains across entire continents.

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What would happen to our cultural legacy? Without us, it won’t last long. Books, paintings, and digital media would begin to degrade quickly.

Even in semi-protected conditions, paper would yellow and crumble. Museums without climate control would suffer from mold and temperature damage. Hard drives and servers would corrode and become unreadable within decades.

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Despite the chaos our disappearance would bring to most ecosystems, there’s a silver lining: greenhouse gases would decline over time, gradually cooling the planet. Oceans and plants would absorb the excess CO₂.

Within a few hundred years, global temperatures could return to pre-industrial levels, though damage like ice sheet loss would take millennia to undo.

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Most recognizable evidence of human civilization would vanish over a few thousand years. Materials like plastic, glass, and some metals might persist for over 500,000 years, but nature would slowly break them down.

Concrete crumbles, buildings collapse, and corrosion eats metal. After 10,000 years, only massive stone structures like Mount Rushmore or the Pyramids might remain—weathered and barely recognizable. Even our radio signals would eventually fade into cosmic background noise.