Just before New Year’s Day, Carlos Ghosn made a daring escape from Japan, where he had been detained awaiting trial for financial misconduct. After months of preparation, the former chief executive of carmakers Nissan and Renault managed to flee the country by being “smuggled through Japanese airport security packed inside an audio-equipment case with breathing holes drilled into the bottom,” as the Wall Street Journal first reported. Ghosn traveled 300 miles from his court-monitored residence in Tokyo to the Osaka airport, where he was then loaded into the large, black equipment box (which apparently went unscanned due to the fact that it was too big to fit through the X-ray machine) and wheeled through the airport and onto a private jet, eventually landing in Lebanon.
There’s nothing like a good escape. The plan, the crew, the execution, the thrill. Argo, Catch Me If You Can, Escape From Alcatraz, The Shawshank Redemption, The Great Escape — it’s a plentiful genre in cinema because there’s something about the fantastical escape story that captivates the imagination.
History is littered with great escapes, many with far greater import than Ghosn’s Japanese escapade. In January 878, Danish Vikings launched a surprise attack on Chippenham, the royal residence of the last free king remaining in England, Alfred of Wessex. The stronghold quickly fell, but Alfred and a small band of survivors managed to escape the onslaught and fled to the marshy swamps of Somerset, where the king licked his wounds and plotted his retribution. From the safety of the swamp, Alfred was able to amass a militia, and four months later, he and his forces emerged and defeated a horde of Danes at the Battle of Edington. Had Alfred not managed to escape Wessex, Anglo-Saxon England would have fallen, perhaps for good.
Had Napoleon not managed to escape his exile in Elba, there would have been no Waterloo. The French emperor painted a 300-ton brig, the Inconstant, to resemble a British ship and used it to slip away on the night of Feb. 26, 1815. Ever vainglorious, Napoleon even informed officials on the island of his impending departure.
Harry “Handcuff” Houdini may have been the toast of audiences worldwide, but Harriet Tubman stands foremost among American escape artists. After escaping from slavery in 1849, Tubman made 13 separate trips south as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, rescuing more than 70 people and earning the nickname “Moses of Her People.” Sure beats “handcuff.”
