On or about August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped
by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and
are then bought by English colonists.

The exact date is not definitively known (a letter from the time
identified the ship’s arrival coming in "the latter part of August"),
but this date has been chosen by many to mark the arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World—beginning two and a half
centuries of slavery in North America.

The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby was found
on May 12, 1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped
from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.

Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years
earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic,
and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh discovered a ransom note
in their 20-month-old child’s empty room on March 1.

In barely legible English, the ransom note (below) demanded
$50,000. The crime captured the attention of the entire nation.

Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter
of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped
from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by three armed men.

Her fiancee, Steven Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a
neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk
of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.

Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small
U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station
that it was holding Hearst as a “prisoner of war.” Four days later,
the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to
every needy person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done,
said the SLA, negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia
Hearst.

Patricia Campbell Hearst will turn 70 on February 20th.

On December 4, 1991, Islamic militants in Lebanon released
kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454
days in captivity.

As chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press,
Anderson covered the long-running civil war in Lebanon,1975- 
1990. On March 16, 1985, he was kidnapped on a west Beirut 
street while leaving a tennis court.

American hostage Terry Anderson photographed by his
captors in Lebanon on Oct. 21, 1988.

Anderson being welcomed home to Lorain, Ohio on June
21, 1992.

Terry Anderson turned 76 on October 27th.

On this day in 1933, a mob of people in San Jose, California, stormed
the jail where Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes are being held
as suspects in the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the 22-
year-old son of a local storeowner. The mob of angry citizens
proceeded to lynch the accused men and then pose them for
pictures.         

Brooke Hart

The dead body of Brooke Hart.

Sheriff William Emig (left), suspect Thomas Thurmond,
and an unknown person are pictured.

John M. Holmes (center).