1356: French King John II was captured and kept hostage by the English. In exchange for a ransom and other hostages, he was released. When one of the hostages escaped, he willingly returned to captivity in England.

1682: The use of the English verb “to kidnap” was first recorded with reference to the practice of taking, “napping”, children, “kids” for use as slaves or labourers, usually in British colonies.

1748: Said to be the last traditional use of hostage exchange: two British peers were sent to France as a pledge that the island of Cape Breton would be returned to the French by the English who governed nearby Novia Scotia.

1949: The Geneva Convention forbade the taking of civilian hostages.

1973: John Paul Getty III was kidnapped. His grandfather, John Paul Getty, then the world’s richest man, refused to pay the $3 million ransom. He relented when one of the boy’s ears was cut off.

1979: Extremists held more than 50 Americans for two years in their embassy in Iran. This crisis is said to have lead to the fall of US President Carter.

1987: Terry Waite was taken hostage. What makes his five years’ captivity so remarkable is that he is one of the few examples of a hostage negotiator becoming a hostage.

1994: Alfredo Harp Helu, Mexican finance chairman and friend of the then president, was kidnapped. The public payment of his $30 million ransom was said to be one of the reasons for a sharp rise in kidnappings in Mexico.

1997: Fourteen rebels from The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement held 72 people hostage in the Japanese embassy in Peru. Four months later, commandos stormed the building and all 14 rebels, but only one hostage, were killed in one of the most successful hostage rescues ever.

1998: Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the detainment of Lebanese hostages solely for prisoner exchanges was acceptable.

2004: Russian children celebrating the start of the new school year in Beslan were taken hostage by Chechen gunmen demanding Russian military withdrawal from Chechnya. By the end of one of the most disastrous rescue attempts ever, over 300 people, mostly children, were dead.

March 2007: BBC reporter Alan Johnston was abducted in Gaza. He was released in the early hours of 4 July, after spending 114 days in captivity.