1875    Notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison and flees to Cuba, then Spain.

1922    In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience. He would serve only 2 years.

1924    Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch". However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes ''Mein Kampf''.

1963    Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes.

1976    The Angolan court sentenced US and UK mercenaries to death sentences and prison terms in the Luanda Trial.

1977    Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray is recaptured after escaping from prison three days before.

1993    450 prisoners rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continued to do so for ten days, citing grievances related to prison conditions, as well as the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis) against their religious beliefs.