Long Beach is part of Los Angeles County. Long Beach has 50.29 square miles of land area and 1.14 square miles of water area. As of 2010, the total Long Beach population is 462,257, which has grown 0.16% since 2000.
It was Nov. 9, 1970, and the prisoner was Nelson Mandela, held on Robben Island for his leading role in planning bomb attacks. A visit to a prison has a significance difficult to put into words, Mandela wrote in a letter to a friend in 1987.
It is our task as leaders to place our views before our organization and to allow the democratic structures to decide,â Mandela said on Feb. 11, 1990. View photos of Nelson Mandelaâs prison years and release. Former South African president and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela turns 95 on Thursday. He spent many of his years in jail while still fighting for a democratic and free society. In all, Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, 18 of those on Robben Island, a rock quarry off the coast of Cape Town.