VIDEO: What the..?!? Who Stole the Beach?

Thieves steal a lot of things, but in this case we are writing about thieves stealing big things. Really big things.

When we think of thieves, the first thing that comes to mind are masked robbers or armed bank robbers. And some people will connect the term “thief” with politicians and businessmen. 

But some people are real megalomaniacs who are not satisfied with your “ordinary” theft of cars, but rather steal entire iron bridges, Cracked reported, offering us a list of colossal thefts.

Bridge went missing over night 

In the Russian town of Khabarovsk, unidentified thieves stole an 11-metre-long steel brodge in the course of just one night. The strangest thing is that none of the locals saw or heard anything.

The bridge was never found and local police believe the thieves cut up the bridge and sold the parts.

Another two bridges went missing in the same area and police think this was done by the same group of thieves.

A church bell weighing a tonne and a half stolen 

A Buddhist temple in the American city of Tahoma had a priceless bell that weighed almost tonne and a half. The bell, made in Vietnam, weighed 1,360 kilograms, but that did not prevent a group of thieves to steal it.

Using a forklift and a truck, the thieves took the bell overnight and, just like in the Russian bridge case, nobody saw or heard anything. Local police believed the thieves would try to sell the bell as old iron. This happened, but only a year after the bell had been stolen. One of the thieves tried to sell the bell for 500 dollars. The owner of the junk depot reported the “seller” to the police and the bell was returned to its rightful owners.

Excuse me, but where is the beach? 

In July 2007, as they were walking along the coast, Jamaican officials noticed that about 800 metres of a sand beach was missing. Again, nobody saw or heard anything, nor does anybody know where the sand ended up. The authorities immediately ruled out all natural causes and assessed that the perpetrators needed more than 500 trucks to take away all of the sand.

Driving the streets of California in  - a tank 

In 1995, American Shawn Nelson one day decided to visit a local military museum and “borrow” a 57-tonne tank. Before stealing the M60 Patton tank, he tried his crowbar on three other combat vehicles.

So, Nelson started up the tank and decided to take a nice drive in the sunny San Diego. Enjoying his drive, he did not care about the traffic around him. He just ran over everything in his path.

But how to stop a tank from going rampant? You don’t. The police decided to follow Nelson in the tank, waiting for the tank to run out of gas. But after 23 minutes of his joy-ride, Nelson ended the pursuit himself by ramming the tank into a concrete barrier on the highway.

Police officers immediately jumped on the tank, opened the hatch and shot Nelson to death. See the VIDEO.

Entire church disappears 

For some thieves, it seems, nothing is sacred, not even a church.

This bizarre event happened, again, in Russia and the main culprits were a businessman and a group of villagers.

One day, a local businessman came to the village and offered the villagers four cents for every brick they bring him.

The villagers thus attacked the village church and in less than a month, the church that was there was there no more. The authorities believe the bricks were needed to build new buildings, so they offered a nice reward for the church to be returned.

Theft of the Empire State Building 

Yes, you read it correctly. Somebody stole an entire 102-storey skyscraper in less than 90 minutes.

Wondering how? Well, the building was not stolen by a horde of miners using heavy machinery or visitors from outer space. It was stolen by reporters.

The New York Daily News newspaper managed to forge a document successfully fooling the local government and transferred ownership of the Empire State Building to a company called Nelots Properties, LLC. If you read Nelots backward, you get the word “stolen”, but not even the city officials noticed this.

With the hoax, the newspaper wanted to draw attention to the system that did not oblige officials to check documents people bring them. Once they drew attention to the corrupt system, the newspaper restored the building to their rightful owners.