You must have heard of the term “Stockholm syndrome,” and you probably know that it has something to do with kidnapping and victims who fall in love with their captors. But while most people know of the phenomenon, not many know that it was born out of a bank robbery that occurred in 1973 in, well, Stockholm.
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To understand what the syndrome is, you need to know what happened in that bank in Sweden’s capital city during those six days in August 1973, when four people were taken hostage. Who were the robbers, what happened to the hostages, and what was so unprecedented that it created a new syndrome?
It started on the morning of August 23, 1973, when a man crossed the street and walked into a bank during its busiest morning hours.