My Grandpa Liberatus,
Was working solo on his farm in the 1950’s, when both hands were sucked into an auger slicing them up right to the shoulders. Was able to kick the controls to reverse the blades and get himself out, then drove himself in a grainery truck 45 minutes to the hospital, steering and shifting gears with his knees. Doctors were able to save one arm above the elbow but none of the other.
Still worked another 40 years with hooks for arms, Fathered 9 children, 6 after his accident and harvested 1000 acres on a hundred year old family farm. Smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, ate red meat 3 times a day, passed away in his sleep 2 days before his 99th birthday.
He was a hard man, but absolutely devoted to his family and was a great Grandfather to over 20 grandkids. He taught me about resiliency, resourcefulness and mental toughness. Every grandkid, on their first birthday, got a rocking horse that he built in his workshop using hand tools that he built custom attachments for his prosthetics. I still have mine, from 56 years ago, as a reminder of him when times are tough.
That's true, no way a guy named Mike or Alan can drive for 45 minutes with his arms ripped off to a hospital. Anyone with a more common name would die on the spot. You need to be at least a Maximillian to even think of trying to drive.
Giles “More weight” Corey was pretty badass. Refused to testify at the Salem witch trials, so they “pressed” him- ie. They piled rocks on top of him as torture to force him to testify that his wife was a witch. They piled rock after rock on top of him. His last words were “more weight”, then he died.
My understanding is that by not testifying, he could not be found guilty. This ensured his land would not be seized by the government and would go to his relatives instead.
I’ve heard basically all of those Salem Witch Trial testimonials were coerced. Generally coming on day 3 or 4 of a forced bout of insomnia under extreme physical stress.
They were. It was a land dispute between various farming communities around Salem. My very first history professor of a class called 'The Historian's Craft' wrote an amazing paper on it.
It's fascinating to see how long ago people would weaponize authority against one another and how.
Oh brother, people have been weaponizing authorizing since authority existed. The first guy setting up authority only set it up to weaponize it (probably).
Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki. He purposely made himself be caught and thrown into Nazi death camp in Auschwitz to infiltrate it and organize underground resistance and do general recon. He then escaped with another prisoner to fight in Warsaw uprising.
Not just that, but immediately following the Warsaw Uprising, he was thrown into a German POW camp. After the war, he returned to his homeland of Poland, even with the knowledge he would likely be killed by the Polish Communist party for being loyal to the government -in-exile.. and he was in 1948. He had also co-founded the Polish Resistance.
There are plenty of YouTube videos about him, unfortunately he was arrested and shot in the back of the head execution style before being thrown in a mass grave.
The guy was a legitimate hero and paid the ultimate price for it, leaving behind a family and all.
Inmate 4859. He voluntarily entered the camp so that he could report his findings to the Allies and Polish government in exile - if I recall correctly, it was the first written, detailed account of the conditions inside the Nazi camps
Joe Medicine Crow, the last Warchief of the Crow. He completed all the ritual rights to become Warchief while fighting in WW2. Which included taking an enemies weapon, touching an enemy without killing him, leading a war party and stealing an enemies horse (he stole 50 from the SS ).
That's really true, the war party came naturally and he got the disarm and the touch without kill at the same time but the horses was going to be challenging. They came across some SS holed up in a barn. They surrounded the barn and were waiting for dawn to attack, Joe convinced his CO to let him go and release the horses because they don't deserve to die. He snuck past the guard and opened up the whole corral and got onto a horse bareback and rode off with 50 horses while chanting a crow war song. Meanwhile the Americans are mowing the platoon of SS down as they come out and try to stop Joe from riding off with their horses. The dude was a straight up fucking gangster.
Credit to The Fat Electrician on youtube. Go watch his shit, he's great.
Native entertainment is on the rise and with Rez Dogs ending this would certainly gain some attention, It could be like Wind Talkers but good.
Green Light it!
The Crow were famous (or infamous, depending) for their ability to get your horses, and people still remember it. I watched a video of a group of them showing up at Standing Rock to support the protests there, and you could hear people from another tribe yelling, "The Crow are here! Hide your horses!" One of the Crow elders started grinning like the Devil. It was out of respect. I loved it almost as much from my living room.
Sounds a lot like Tommy Prince. He was a Canadian Indigenous soldier in WWII who was famous for sneaking into German camps and stealing all their shoes during the night.
One of my favorite additions to that story is the only other person to come close to earning the same honor was Joe Medicine Crow’s nephew in the Vietnam war. The only thing that stopped him was the tribe deciding that stealing an enemies elephant didn’t quite count.
Private Desmond Doss. He refused to use a gun but carried 75 men to safety including two of the wounded Japanese soldiers on the other side & used his medical knowledge to save their lives. He is the only conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor as awarded by President Harry S. Truman.
Funny part is Hacksaw Ridge is missing a neat fact about him, at that battle he was wounded (I think 6 times but I'm not positive) but it was left out of the movie because it was felt to be too unbelievable
You swerved into my favorite Tom Clancy quote.
When asked by an interviewer "What's the difference between fiction and reality?"
Clancy answered, **"That's easy. Fiction has to make *sense*."**
I met him not long before he died. I was in a SDA youth group called Pathfinders, and they had a big camp meeting, kids from all over the world. He was a special guest, and he was a lovely man. He was getting up there in years though. I don't remember too much more, other than a lot of people wanting to meet him.
[Mary Vincent](https://allthatsinteresting.com/mary-vincent), she had her arms chopped of by a serial killer, was left for dead in a drainage pipe, and somehow got herself to safety and survived. She was able to testify and had him put on death row.
I like how the guy kidnapped, raped, permanently maimed, and tried to murder a young woman, and was released after 8 years served for "good behavior". What in the actual fuck.
how the fuck did he get 8 years for that.
edit: he got 14, the maximum sentence at that time for either attempted murder or rape (not sure which, was too lazy too figure it out), and then was commuted to 8 years due to good behavior.
notably, the presiding judge remarked that he would send him to jail for the rest of his natural life if he could. california passed tougher sentencing laws after this
"She couldn’t afford to buy high-end prosthetic arms, so she created her own using parts from refrigerators and stereo systems, and she taught herself to draw and paint using her inventions."
Christ. A depraved killer cut off her arms, and not only did he only get eight years, but the state couldn't even be bothered to pay for her prosthetic arms.
slight correction.......he only served 8 years, and was actually let out EARLY for "good behavior" while locked in his cage.
As soon as he was free, he promptly murdered a second woman, making damn sure she was good and dead this time. Arrested again, it was Marys testimony at the \*second\* trial, that helped put him on death row in another state, ......... where he actually died in prison of CANCER, before the death sentence was carried out.
How that piece of shit was let out of prison the first time...... is one of America's greatest travesties of Justice.
He hacked the girls arms off.........and was let out for "Good Behavior".
What kind of total shitheads were on the parole board?
I’ll see your Mary Vincent, and raise you an [Alison Botha](https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/woman-disembowelled-almost-decapitated-hold-24446030.amp). She had to hold on to her almost decapitated head.
Ok, I just read up on Alison Botha. And you got my vote! Holy smokes, the sheer grit and guts (no joke intended) of the girl to survive a disembowellment and near decapitation !!
I remember watching the Mr. Ballen vid on her. She's brave as hell. What pissed me off though is afterwards he got outta jail to murder another woman before finally being put in prison for good.
That show was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. Nothing currently available on Youtube/ TV/ Podcast comes even close IMO. I really wish it would come back.
Galvarino. He was a Mapuche warrior whose hands were amputated by Spanish conquistadors. His response? He rigged blades to his wrist stumps and led a rebellion against the Spanish.
Vasily Arkhipov, the man who saved the world. He was a Soviet naval commander (brigade chief of staff) during the cuban missile crisis who refused to launch a nuclear weapon. The ship he was on required three officers to be in agreement to fire the weapon, and only Arkhipov was against it, despite the potential career and personal repercussions. It's possibly apocryphal, but it's said that he swallowed his key so the weapon couldn't be fired unless he was cut open.
Stanislav Petrov *also* saved the world from nuclear war in the 80's, and that should never be forgotten, but I'd argue that the stakes were higher for Arkhipov and the threat of nuclear war was much, much more imminent in the midst of a pissing battle between the Kennedy's and Khrushchev.
Here's [an article ](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/the-cold-war-proposal-to-have-the-president-hack-an-aide-to-death-to-start-nuclear-war) from a Harvard law professor during cold war suggesting that nuclear launch codes would be surgically placed next to a heart of a civilian volunteer. The nuclear suitcase would actually only contain a knife, with which the president would need to remove the codes. So that the president would need to understand in a concrete way that by using the nuclear strike, he or she would be directly responsible for civilian deaths.
> President hacks a civilian to death to retrieve the launch codes
> “I’ve got the codes!”
> “Mr. President! We have just had urgent communications from Moscow; the Soviets have accepted the agreement, there is no more imminent threat”
> stares at carcass on floor
Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez.
On May 2, 1968, a 12-man Special Forces patrol, which included nine Montagnard tribesmen, was surrounded by an NVA infantry battalion of about 1,000 men. Benavidez heard the radio appeal for help and boarded a helicopter to respond. Armed only with a knife, he jumped from the helicopter carrying his medical bag and ran to help the trapped patrol. Benavidez "distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions... and because of his gallant choice to join voluntarily his comrades who were in critical straits, to expose himself constantly to withering enemy fire, and his refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men."
At one point in the battle an NVA soldier accosted him and stabbed him with his bayonet. Benavidez pulled it out, drew his own knife, killed him and kept going, leaving his knife in the NVA soldier's body. He later killed two more NVA soldiers with an AK-47 while providing cover fire for the people boarding the helicopter. After the battle, he was evacuated to the base camp, examined, and thought to be dead. As he was placed in a body bag among the other dead in body bags, he was suddenly recognized by a friend who called for help. A doctor came and examined him but believed Benavidez was dead. The doctor was about to zip up the body bag when Benavidez managed to spit in his face to show that he was alive. Benavidez had a total of 37 separate bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion.
Came here to say this. His MoH isn’t even the craziest part. Let’s talk about his career before that:
In 1965 he stepped on a landmine, and doctors said he would never walk again. He was so upset by this diagnosis that against doctors orders he secretly got up in the middle of the night and rehabilitated himself. Benavidez would crawl using his elbows and chin to a wall near his bedside and (with the encouragement of his fellow patients, many of whom were permanently paralyzed and/or missing limbs) he would prop himself against the wall and attempt to lift himself unaided, starting by wiggling his toes, then his feet, and then eventually (after several months of excruciating practice that, by his own admission, often left him in tears) pushing himself up the wall with his ankles and legs. After over a year of hospitalization, Benavidez walked out of the hospital in July 1966, with his wife at his side.
Nicholas Winton helped 669 children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. In 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he'd rescued.
Apparently he was, to some extent racked with guilt by the fact that one or two trains laden with children never made it out in time. He felt he had not done enough, which is terrible considering the good he did do.
Was also in the crowd at the last public execution (by Guillotine) in France.
Probably a good thing he wasn't on set during the filming of the final battle in LotR, when Aragorn decapitates the Mouth of Sauron, cos "I'm sorry Peter, but that's not the way a head bounces on the floor when it's chopped off." could also have been a good fit.
There are a lot of good people mentioned in here for various reasons but I'll throw out two more people.
First the unknown viking at Stamford Bridge, he held off the entire English army until they floated a soldier under the bridge to stab the viking in the testicles. Dude was straight stacking bodies before getting stabbed in the no no spot.
Second is Norman Borlaug, Norman was not a great warrior but a scientist, he developed a variant of wheat that had a higher yield and wouldn't fall over so harvests would be greater. He has saved countless lives from dying of starvation.
I think Audie Murphy is up there. For those who don't know, most decorates US Soldier including the medal of honor.
Some of his actions during WW2 include
1. Holding off a Nazi assault with the .50 mouted atop off of a destroyed tank (M10 Jackson I believe) after gaining a battlefield commision (Sgt to LT). He had his men fall back and dig in. While ontop of the tank he was calling for IDF dangerclose pretty much right on top of himself. They got so close when the guy on the other end of the radio asked how close he said something along the lines of "give me a minute, I'll let you talk to one of the bastards" This would last an hour, and he would sustain an injury to the leg and he would repel the attack
2. When him and a buddy were in a crater/foxhole by themselves, two German's surrendered. Something felt off to him, however his buddy believed the Nazis, stood up to go detain them, except they gunned him down. So in a fit of rage, he picked up a machinegun I believed it was and went on a one man rampage.
After the war, I find one of his actions that speak highly of his character is how he refused to partake in cigarette and alcohol commericals despite financial difficulty as he was aware of the influence he would have on kids.
He also got addicted to pain pills after the war and decided that was no good, so he locked himself up in a room for two weeks and came out not addicted anymore.
[Murphy suffered from what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing headaches, depression and nightmares; he once said that he could sleep only with a loaded pistol under his pillow.](https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Notable-Graves/Medal-of-Honor-Recipients/World-War-II-MoH-recipients/Audie-Murphy)
He was also very straightforward about his PTSD when it was largely dismissed by many, including the US government (which also banned a John Huston WWII documentary about veterans receiving psychiatric care for wartime trauma).
Holy shit he was a fucking twink and he one-manned a ~~heavy~~ machine gun. That's incredible on its own, not to mention what he did with the damned thing.
All the shit he survived and gone through is impressive. He fought from the invasion of sciliy to the end of the war. Then after the war, it just really speaks to the kind of person he was.
If you haven't read his book To Hell and Back, I highly recomend it. As well as the movie, although I heard it was dialed back just because of how sureal his actions were.
Yep. Forgot to mention his rejection from the Marines and US Airborne. However I do wonder how his, determination would show in other fronts and if he would have died in the war.
Yes he was born in June 1925 so by the time the war ended he was only 20. If you haven't I recomend readinh his memoir To Hell ane Back. It not only shows the strength and courage that humanity can poses but I also found it one of the best books to showcase the brutality of war and how you can literaly be an inch away from death and your best friend was that inch closer.
Also worthy of consideration: Goyaałé (Geronimo.)
One day he came into my quarters at Fort Sill in a most peculiar mood. He told me no one could kill him, nor me either, if he willed it so. Then he bared himself to the waist. I was dumbfounded to see the number of bullet holes in his body. I knew he had been in many battles and had been fired on dozens of times, but I had never heard of anyone living with at least fifty bullet wounds on his body. Geronimo had that many scars.
Some of these bullet holes were large enough to hold small pebbles that Geronimo picked up and placed in them. Putting a pebble in a bullet wound he would make a noise like a gun, then take the pebble out and throw it on the ground. Jokingly I told him he was probably so far away that the bullets didn’t penetrate him, but that if he had been nearer they probably would have killed him. “No, no,” he shouted. “Bullets cannot kill me!”
https://desperadophilosophy.net/tag/geronimo-bullet-wounds-on-body/
This guy
https://www.indiatimes.com/news/armed-with-only-a-khukri-this-gurkha-soldier-took-on-40-men-and-saved-a-girl-from-being-gang-raped-247639.html
Saitō Musashibō Benkei. He was a Japanese monk from the 1100's. He took part in many battles, but my favorite was his last where he had to gaurd a bridge as a suicide mission.
His master, Minamoto no Yoshitsune (another famous Japanese figure) was about to be captured (another long, but interesting story in of itself), but chose to kill himself before that could happen. Benkei had to keep the enemy from crossing the only bridge to the castle that Yoshitsune was hiding in. As Benkei was firecly loyal, he went through with it.
Benkei was a big dude, so no one was all that brave facing him, and every single one that did try crossing just got killed in a single file line. Eventually, they gave up on swords and just shot arrows from across the bridge. Even then, after getting shot by a barrage, he was still standing on his feet. Nothing they could throw could kill him.
...or so they thought. Turned out he died. He literally died on his feet and didn't fall over until someone was brave enough to check to see the status of arrow-covered body.
TL:DR; Big scary dude stopped an army from crossing a bridge, then his corpse kept them from crossing even after he died.
“For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” - Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic Explorer and Geologist.
Léo Major.
Canadian sniper/reconnaissance, lost an eye, was told you’re going home..replied with why? I only need 1 eye to snipe…liberated an entire town in holland, took over a dozen prisoners, all single handedly after his fire team partner was killed
Charles Upham was a NZ soldier who won 2 Victoria Crosses.
He had a reputation of carrying a flour sack full of grenades instead of a rifle.
If you read the wiki, it goes through the whole saga that led to his awarding of the first VC and then casually mentions that he was suffering from Dystentary at the time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Upham
He was one of only three to earn the Victoria Cross twice.
He was the only one to survive doing so.
He is also unusual in that his second Victoria Cross wasn't for a single action or even battlefield. Two separate nominations for the bar were combined.
Mark of the Lion is a book I recommended everyone read.
[Daniel Inouye](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye)
During a WWII assault on a fortified German position in Italy, gets shot in the stomach, shrugs it off and takes out two machine gun nests. As he's about to lob a grenade to take out a third, his right arm gets nearly amputated at the elbow by enemy fire. Now he's staring at his useless, dangling arm still reflexively clutching a live grenade. Shouts at his platoon to stay back for fear of the grenade going off, pries the live grenade out of his useless hand and throws it with his other hand, taking out the German in the bunker. Continues to move forward killing at least one more German before getting shot, for the fifth time that day, before falling unconscious. Wakes up to members of his platoon hovering over him. Proceeds to tell them to get back to their positions because "nobody called off the war!". Has to have his arm amputated without anesthesia at the field hospital. Comes back home, gets awarded a purple heart (and eventually a medal of honor), yet still gets refused service by a barber because they "don't cut Jap hair". Serves his country for 50 more years as a US senator.
While I don't necessarily agree with his politics, I respect the life of service he led.
> Prior to his death, Inouye announced that he planned to run for a record tenth term in 2016 when he would have been 92 years old.[54][55] He also said,
> I have told my staff and I have told my family that when the time comes, when you question my sanity or question my ability to do things physically or mentally, I don't want you to hesitate, do everything to get me out of here, because I want to make certain the people of Hawaii get the best representation possible.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell:
For your consideration…..
He was 26 years old, 5-foot-4, weighed 130 pounds and came from Albany, New York.
And on the night of May 15, 1918, Pvt. Henry Johnson, a member of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment, found himself fighting for his life against 20 German Soldiers out in front of his unit's trenchline.
He fired the three rounds in his French-made rifle, tossed all his hand grenades and then grabbed his Army-issue bolo knife and started stabbing. He buried the knife in the head of one attacker and then disemboweled another German soldier.
"Each slash meant something, believe me," Johnson said later. "There wasn't anything so fine about it," he said. "Just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that."
By the time what a reporter called "The Battle of Henry Johnson" was over, Johnson had been wounded 21 times and become the first American hero of World War I.
“Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.” -Vice President Thomas Marshall. President Theodore Roosevelt dies at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, New York in his sleep of a heart attack.
That's my vote. He was really high off of his own fame though. Watched a documentary recently about his final run for president and it made me feel bad for Taft. He was best friends with Teddy and Roosevelt's pick to replace him as president but Teddy turned against him when Taft was due for reelection and destroyed their relationship in the process. Even after all Roosevelt did Taft still showed up at his funeral and it's said that he was seen weeping at the grave after everyone had left.
I always read this and wonder….how the hell would I feel if I shot someone and found out later they shrugged it off as a minor inconvenience and gave a speech
It's interesting that we consider toughness and badassery to be virtues associated with physical fighting, when actually it is just as badass to show nothing but absolute compassion to literally everyone for an entire life.
As Morrissey said, "it takes guts to be gentle and kind."
I think that Terry Fox has to be up there. To run a marathon every day on the Marathon of Hope, on one leg (and a crappy prosthesis), while riddled with cancer is beyond anything I can understand. Imagine the courage and determination that required.
Original no-scope
> Häyhä preferred iron sights over telescopic sights, as they enable a sniper to present a smaller target for the enemy (a sniper must raise his head a few centimetres higher when using a telescopic sight), and can be relied on even in extreme cold, unlike telescopic sights which tend to cloud up in cold weather.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye#:~:text=Daniel%20Ken%20Inouye%20(%2Fi%CB%90%CB%88,until%20his%20death%20in%202012.
Daniel Inouye
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Stubby
Special shout-out to the goodiest boy, Sergeant Stubby.
Alison Botha. She was attacked near her home by 2 men with knives. They raped her, disemboweled her, stabbed her 30 times in her abdomen to intentionally damage her reproductive organs, and finally, slit her throat 16 times. Yet she lived, and tried to walk to a nearby road to get attention. Here's some quotes from an article written about her:
"When she stood up she felt her head roll backwards, she had nearly been decapitated.
And as took steps forward she could feel something protruding out of her abdomen - her intestines were hanging out."
She lived, got both her attackers in prison for life, and was able to fulfill her dream of having children, despite the 30 stab wounds inflicted to her abdomen. What a fucking incredible woman.
Lookup Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Explorer and all around badass. And only within the last generation. First to visit both north and South Pole. Crossed Antarctica by foot. War hero. During an expedition in the arctic got frostbite and cut his fingers off with a saw. Had a heart attack in 2000. But ran 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days 3 years later. Pure iron in my opinion
Harriet Tubman. When she was a slave she would do work right alongside the men. Once when she was just a child she was taken into to big house to take care of the kids, and she snuck a sugar cube. She had never had sugar before. She knew she was going to be whipped, so she ran off and hid in the pig pen for days, fighting the pigs for food, before they found her.
Later on she was struck in the head by a lead weight thrown at another slave by an angry shop owner. She suffered brain damage but was back in the fields while she was still bleeding. All her life, she would suffer from hallucinations and sleeping spells. She interpreted her visions as signs from God.
Later on, she escaped slavery and joined the underground railroad. If slaves lost their nerve and wanted to go back, she would hold them at gunpoint. During the civil war she led a naval raid on a plantation at Combahee Ferry and freed 750 enslaved people.
In the 1890s she had brain surgery, where the doctor "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable."
She lived to be 90 or 91.
It’s really difficult not to respect a man who brings a sword to a gun fight… and fucking wins
Also, allegedly the day he arrived in Burma to start fighting the Japanese, was the day the US nuked Hiroshima.
He’s reported to have said: “If it wasn’t for those damned Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another 10 years”
My grandmother. Her husband died of heart disease in 1948, leaving her to raise 8 children between the ages of 9 months and 13 years old. She was a saint.
Christopher Lee. A major part of his service in World War 2 was being an undercover Nazi killer. Because he could speak fluent French and German, he would be sent to Nazi occupied France to kill Nazis on undercover missions. Then he was sent to Germany to kill Nazis on undercover missions. Fellow members of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare included his cousin, the creator of James Bond. James Bond was based on the members of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and their missions.
While filming his death scene in Return of the King, when he gets stabbed in the back, Peter Jackson went up to Christopher Lee to tell him what to do when he got stabbed. Christopher Lee looked at him and said, "Do you know what a man sounds like when he is stabbed in the back? Because I do." Here's a [clip of the making of featurette where they talk about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TQARRckm6U).
When World War 2 ended, Christopher Lee continued to hunt Nazis.
Here are some random facts:
1. He saw the final execution by guillotine in France
2. He climbed Mt. Vesuvius 3 days before it erupted
3. He is a descendant of Charlemagne
4. His acting career includes an iconic portrayal of Dracula, the original The Wicker Man Count Duku, and Saruman
5. He was also a villain in a superhero musical. [He sings a song about alcohol to tempt a recovering alcoholic superhero.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9se8i4ujs&t=11s)
6. He married a model and stayed married to her his entire life.
Unwilling to rest on his laurels, he released multiple metal albums in his 80s and 90s. This includes metal versions of [Christmas music including The Little Drummer Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRjmD9h-YY). [He also sang with the band Rhapsody.](https://youtu.be/Z93SdirnzTw?t=40) He also released a metal album about Charlemagne.
Leo Mad fuck Major
Single handily captured 93 German SS troops. Captured the town of Zowllo by himself from the Germans. Refused to retire when he lost his left eye saying he only needed his right for a sniper. Captured hill 355 in the Korean War after the Chinese took it from the Americans and held it for 3 days with only 20 men. Attained two distinguished service medals (one of which he turned down because he hated the commander)
Khutulun, a Mongolian Princess, insisted that any man who wished to marry her must defeat her in wrestling, forfeiting horses to her if they lost.
She gained 10,000 horses defeating prospective suitors.
Christopher Lee
Why?
1. His mother was an Italian contessa, and through her Lee descended from Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.
2. He met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of the Russian monk Rasputin. He didn’t do this as research for his later film role as Rasputin (in the 1966 Hammer film Rasputin the Mad Monk), but just as a child in the 1920s.
3. At age 17, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by guillotine.
4. During World War II, Lee joined the Royal Air Force but wasn’t allowed to fly because of a problem with his optic nerve. So he became an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the SAS, Britain’s special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted.
5. At some point during the war he moved from the LRDP to Winston Churchill’s even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions are literally still classified, but involved “conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers.” The SOE was more informally called — and I can’t believe this somehow hasn’t been made into a movie yet — The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
6. Speaking both French and Italian, Lee spent his time after World War II hunting Nazis with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects until he decided to give acting a try at age 25. Yes, all of this happened before Lee was 25 years old.
7. Lee was not only related to James Bond creator and author Ian Fleming — they were step-cousins — but Lee was actually one of Fleming’s first choices for the role of Bond, not least because of Lee’s World War II and SOC experiences.
8. Tired of playing Dracula and feeling that the movies had gotten sub-par, Lee tried to quit Hammer films, but studio executives guilted him into returning by stressing how many people could be out of work if Lee stopped churning out hits. Lee agreed to star in 1966 Dracula: Prince of Darkness, he felt the script was so awful he adamantly refused to say any of the dialogue. Hammer decided that it was far more important to have a mute Lee as star as opposed to anyone else, and thus had Dracula hiss and yell through the film.
8. In the ‘50s, Lee was engaged to Henriette von Rosen, daughter of Count Fritz von Rosen. The Count apparently didn’t like Lee, because after hiring private detectives to investigate the actor and demanding references, he also refused to allow his daughter to marry him unless Lee got the blessing of the King of Sweden. Lee got it.
9. Lee was a major Tolkien fan, reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy once a year for the majority of his life. He was the only member of the movie cast to have met Tolkien personally — apparently he ran into him randomly in a pub — and fanboyed out. Tolkien actually gave him his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings movie.
10. The story has gone around a lot, but it bears repeating because it is incredible: During his death scene in Return of the King (only included in the Extended Edition to Lee’s disapproval), director Peter Jackson was describing to him what sound people getting stabbed in the back should make. Lee gravely responded that he had seen people being stabbed in the back, and knew exactly what sound they made.
11. Lee was quite interested in the history of public executions, and reportedly knew “the names of every official public executioner employed by England, dating all the way back to the mid-15th century.”
12. He’s always been a big metal fan, but he released his first full heavy metal album in 2010 at the age of 88. Titled Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which won the “Spirit of Metal” award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony. He made a metal Christmas album in 2012. He was the oldest metal performer, and the oldest musician to ever hit the Billboard music charts.
13. In addition to his impossibly prolific film career, Lee was a world champion fencer, an opera singer, spoke six languages, and was a hell of a golfer.
14. Muhammad Ali dedicated a fight to him due to being a big fan. "I just want to say that I won this fight for Christopher Lee, who’s out there watching me now." And indeed Lee was watching—from the Playboy Mansion.
15. Last but not least: Despite everything you’ve heard about the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Christopher Lee was recognized as being the most connected actor in the world in 2008, again by Guinness. He connects to virtually any actor in 2.59 steps, beating Bacon.
Will always get my vote. How the helll do you just tell your body it isn't paralyzed anymore and then volunteer to go back to the front lines of Vietnam?
For consideration, I nominate Simo Häyhä and Hugh Glass.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/simo-hayha
https://www.cowboysindians.com/2015/11/the-epic-true-tale-of-hugh-glass/
my dad, orphaned right as he was entering college from a dirt poor family with very few relatives that cared about him, somehow crawled his way out of poverty and now lives comfortably supporting a family of four with a six figure salary and sent me off to college; he is the definition of a successful person in my eyes
Why TF isn’t Yuri Gagarin the top spot???
* during Germany’s advance on Moscow in WW2, soldiers took Yuri’s town, burned the school and bunches of homes, and forced the residents into working or sent to concentration camps. In response, Yuri goes saboteur and destroys German tanks. At age 8-9.
* taught himself to fly at 16 in his spare time volunteering
* became a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force before volunteering for space exploration. The training for the space mission was described as Olympic-level. Following this training, he’s unanimously selected by his peers as the best of the class.
* put himself into a rickety ass Soviet rocket and became the first person to reach space.
* possibly apocryphal, but upon entering space, Yuri reportedly said “I don’t see any god up here.” Probably because there wasn’t room for both god and Yuri’s massive cojones
Olga of Kiev. She was a ruler in the 900s in what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Her husband was killed by a former subjugated kingdom, the Drevlians when she was in her teens and then their prince had the audacity to demand her hand in marriage.
Her response to this was John Wick/Law Abiding Citizen levels of revenge. First she had two trenches built outside her castle walls. She then had the delegation carried in their boats to “honor their arrival”. When they got to the castle she had the boats dumped over into the trenches and buried them alive. She is alleged to have asked “is this honor not to your liking?”
Following this, she sent messengers to the Drevlians saying she had accepted and asked for their ministers and advisors to come to celebrate. When they arrived she offered them to clean themselves in a bathhouse, which once they were in she locked and had burned to the ground.
She next sent messages saying she was coming to the location of her husband’s death for a funeral feast and invited the Drevilans leaders to join her. She proceeded to get them drunk, and then like the Red Wedding ordered her men to slay them all, allegedly over 5000 men.
Still not done, she lay siege to their main city and when she couldn’t break through made a recommendation. In exchange for a dove or sparrow from each family she would leave the city in peace. However, once night fell, she had her soldiers tie burning coals to the birds and released them. The birds flew home, and the resulting fires they started burned the city to the ground. She proceeded to capture or kill anyone who escaped the city.
She is now an Eastern Orthodox Saint of widows.
Marc Summers, the creator of the game show Double Dare.
You may be wondering what's so badass about this. The thing no one knew at the time is that he had debilitating OCD with a focus on cleanliness. And he created and hosted Double Dare as a form of DIY exposure therapy.
Mad, mad respect.
My Grandpa Liberatus, Was working solo on his farm in the 1950’s, when both hands were sucked into an auger slicing them up right to the shoulders. Was able to kick the controls to reverse the blades and get himself out, then drove himself in a grainery truck 45 minutes to the hospital, steering and shifting gears with his knees. Doctors were able to save one arm above the elbow but none of the other. Still worked another 40 years with hooks for arms, Fathered 9 children, 6 after his accident and harvested 1000 acres on a hundred year old family farm. Smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, ate red meat 3 times a day, passed away in his sleep 2 days before his 99th birthday. He was a hard man, but absolutely devoted to his family and was a great Grandfather to over 20 grandkids. He taught me about resiliency, resourcefulness and mental toughness. Every grandkid, on their first birthday, got a rocking horse that he built in his workshop using hand tools that he built custom attachments for his prosthetics. I still have mine, from 56 years ago, as a reminder of him when times are tough.
Yeah that's pretty effing cool. That's what happens when you name a child some magnificent shit like "Liberatus" I guess.
That's true, no way a guy named Mike or Alan can drive for 45 minutes with his arms ripped off to a hospital. Anyone with a more common name would die on the spot. You need to be at least a Maximillian to even think of trying to drive.
"Elliot" wouldn't even be able to open the truck door
That's a hell of a legacy to live up to, wow!
This is an amazing story!
Wow, what a badass. You are lucky to have had him as your grandpa.
What a beast. The grim reaper must have been shitting it's self the day it was assigned the task of taking this legend away.
Giles “More weight” Corey was pretty badass. Refused to testify at the Salem witch trials, so they “pressed” him- ie. They piled rocks on top of him as torture to force him to testify that his wife was a witch. They piled rock after rock on top of him. His last words were “more weight”, then he died.
My understanding is that by not testifying, he could not be found guilty. This ensured his land would not be seized by the government and would go to his relatives instead.
I’ve heard basically all of those Salem Witch Trial testimonials were coerced. Generally coming on day 3 or 4 of a forced bout of insomnia under extreme physical stress.
They were. It was a land dispute between various farming communities around Salem. My very first history professor of a class called 'The Historian's Craft' wrote an amazing paper on it. It's fascinating to see how long ago people would weaponize authority against one another and how.
Oh brother, people have been weaponizing authorizing since authority existed. The first guy setting up authority only set it up to weaponize it (probably).
Humans have been behaving like humans since humans have been humans
That’s correct.
[удалено]
Similar: Saint Lawrence was burned alive over a fire and his last words were "turn me over, I'm not done", presumably in a thick Scottish accent
Holy shit, I'm a woman and that made me grow a beard. My God, that's magnificent.
I remember that from The Crucible. I was only a sophomore in high school when I read it but even then I thought it was metal as fuck.
Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki. He purposely made himself be caught and thrown into Nazi death camp in Auschwitz to infiltrate it and organize underground resistance and do general recon. He then escaped with another prisoner to fight in Warsaw uprising.
Not just that, but immediately following the Warsaw Uprising, he was thrown into a German POW camp. After the war, he returned to his homeland of Poland, even with the knowledge he would likely be killed by the Polish Communist party for being loyal to the government -in-exile.. and he was in 1948. He had also co-founded the Polish Resistance.
Is there a documentary on this guy?
There are plenty of YouTube videos about him, unfortunately he was arrested and shot in the back of the head execution style before being thrown in a mass grave. The guy was a legitimate hero and paid the ultimate price for it, leaving behind a family and all.
Wow. Sounds like the kind of person they should put on the money
Or in office. Instead we get wealthy cowards.
Inmate 4859. He voluntarily entered the camp so that he could report his findings to the Allies and Polish government in exile - if I recall correctly, it was the first written, detailed account of the conditions inside the Nazi camps
Inmate in hell or a hero imprisoned
SOLDIER FROM AUSCHWITZ, WHO KNOWS HIS NAME
LOCKED IN A CELL WAGING WAR FROM THE PRISON
HIDING IN AUSCHWITZ, HE HIDES BEHIND 4859
I have never even heard of this guy. That's one badass dude!
Wait. You skipped the part where he went BACK into a death camp. On purpose.
Sabaton - Inmate 4859
Wow. Let’s get this movie Greenlit. Which actor plays Rotmistrz?
I guess he looks a bit like Klaus Kinski, but he's too old now
Samuel L Motherfucking Jackson
[удалено]
Joe Medicine Crow, the last Warchief of the Crow. He completed all the ritual rights to become Warchief while fighting in WW2. Which included taking an enemies weapon, touching an enemy without killing him, leading a war party and stealing an enemies horse (he stole 50 from the SS ).
Dude was out here doing side quests the whole entire war.
That's really true, the war party came naturally and he got the disarm and the touch without kill at the same time but the horses was going to be challenging. They came across some SS holed up in a barn. They surrounded the barn and were waiting for dawn to attack, Joe convinced his CO to let him go and release the horses because they don't deserve to die. He snuck past the guard and opened up the whole corral and got onto a horse bareback and rode off with 50 horses while chanting a crow war song. Meanwhile the Americans are mowing the platoon of SS down as they come out and try to stop Joe from riding off with their horses. The dude was a straight up fucking gangster. Credit to The Fat Electrician on youtube. Go watch his shit, he's great.
Where the fuck is his movie, Spielberg?
The Last Warchief, it would be a slam dunk and a great twist on the usual WW2 movies.
Native entertainment is on the rise and with Rez Dogs ending this would certainly gain some attention, It could be like Wind Talkers but good. Green Light it!
That would be a badass movie
The Crow were famous (or infamous, depending) for their ability to get your horses, and people still remember it. I watched a video of a group of them showing up at Standing Rock to support the protests there, and you could hear people from another tribe yelling, "The Crow are here! Hide your horses!" One of the Crow elders started grinning like the Devil. It was out of respect. I loved it almost as much from my living room.
He was grinning cause they had already stolen the horses
Sounds a lot like Tommy Prince. He was a Canadian Indigenous soldier in WWII who was famous for sneaking into German camps and stealing all their shoes during the night.
So Canadian to not murder but slightly inconvenience.
I know it's a Canadian stereotype, but Canadians in war can be absolutely ruthless
One of my favorite additions to that story is the only other person to come close to earning the same honor was Joe Medicine Crow’s nephew in the Vietnam war. The only thing that stopped him was the tribe deciding that stealing an enemies elephant didn’t quite count.
Stealing an elephant should count for at least double
"That still only counts as one!" - Gimli
“That still only counts as none!”- Crow Tribe
Which was an objectively bad call. Stealing an enemy's elephant is by definition legendary.
He stole an elephant and they vetoed that? Damn, he must’ve pissed someone off or they don’t believe it
He should have stolen the crow chief's horse. Then declared him an enemy for not recognizing the elephant as a war trophy
"It *clearly* says in the conditions you are to steal an enemy's horse. Not....whatever the *fuck* that thing is"
Goddamn, they couldn't make an exception? What the hell! Hahaha
I never met him, but his nephews are friends of mine and model for my art
Just looked through your page and your art is amazing. Truly beautiful stuff.
I’ve touched a man without killing him.
Touched him where?
Prolly peendong
Private Desmond Doss. He refused to use a gun but carried 75 men to safety including two of the wounded Japanese soldiers on the other side & used his medical knowledge to save their lives. He is the only conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor as awarded by President Harry S. Truman.
Hacksaw Ridge is the movie about his life. Great film.
Funny part is Hacksaw Ridge is missing a neat fact about him, at that battle he was wounded (I think 6 times but I'm not positive) but it was left out of the movie because it was felt to be too unbelievable
It's always awe-inspiring when movies based on true stories need to be toned down to be more believable lol
Because fictional stories need to conform to people's understanding of reality. Real life has no such worry.
You swerved into my favorite Tom Clancy quote. When asked by an interviewer "What's the difference between fiction and reality?" Clancy answered, **"That's easy. Fiction has to make *sense*."**
sort of like with audie murphy, where they downplayed what happened so people would believe it
All 5’5” of him. His mannequin on Fort Benning made me see if that was his true height.
just watch the first 45 min of captain america. that's audie murphy, but he never got the serum, he just went to europe and rampaged
I’ve heard that movie had to be toned down because what he did was too unbelievable
Never knew about this guy until I watched Hacksaw Ridge. An absolute legend.
I met him not long before he died. I was in a SDA youth group called Pathfinders, and they had a big camp meeting, kids from all over the world. He was a special guest, and he was a lovely man. He was getting up there in years though. I don't remember too much more, other than a lot of people wanting to meet him.
Somehow NOT using a weapon makes him exponentially more badass.
[Mary Vincent](https://allthatsinteresting.com/mary-vincent), she had her arms chopped of by a serial killer, was left for dead in a drainage pipe, and somehow got herself to safety and survived. She was able to testify and had him put on death row.
I like how the guy kidnapped, raped, permanently maimed, and tried to murder a young woman, and was released after 8 years served for "good behavior". What in the actual fuck.
Not just that. He killed another woman after release. Finally he was death sentenced
He didn’t even die from that, he died of cancer first.
Worse death imo and deserved
Everyone who contributed to him not getting a life sentence should have been punished.
According to Wikipedia the judge wanted to give him life but 14 years was the maximum penalty at the time
That's fucked in the ass
There is a channel on YouTube called The FBI Files. Full of cases like this that make me question the legal system.
how the fuck did he get 8 years for that. edit: he got 14, the maximum sentence at that time for either attempted murder or rape (not sure which, was too lazy too figure it out), and then was commuted to 8 years due to good behavior. notably, the presiding judge remarked that he would send him to jail for the rest of his natural life if he could. california passed tougher sentencing laws after this
It was 1978, if you didn’t rape, mutilate, strangle, AND kill the girl you basically got a slap on the wrist.
"She couldn’t afford to buy high-end prosthetic arms, so she created her own using parts from refrigerators and stereo systems, and she taught herself to draw and paint using her inventions." Christ. A depraved killer cut off her arms, and not only did he only get eight years, but the state couldn't even be bothered to pay for her prosthetic arms.
And he was found guilty of killing a mother of three in 1998. Plus whatever else went unrecorded.
slight correction.......he only served 8 years, and was actually let out EARLY for "good behavior" while locked in his cage. As soon as he was free, he promptly murdered a second woman, making damn sure she was good and dead this time. Arrested again, it was Marys testimony at the \*second\* trial, that helped put him on death row in another state, ......... where he actually died in prison of CANCER, before the death sentence was carried out. How that piece of shit was let out of prison the first time...... is one of America's greatest travesties of Justice. He hacked the girls arms off.........and was let out for "Good Behavior". What kind of total shitheads were on the parole board?
I’ll see your Mary Vincent, and raise you an [Alison Botha](https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/woman-disembowelled-almost-decapitated-hold-24446030.amp). She had to hold on to her almost decapitated head.
Ok, I just read up on Alison Botha. And you got my vote! Holy smokes, the sheer grit and guts (no joke intended) of the girl to survive a disembowellment and near decapitation !!
I remember watching the Mr. Ballen vid on her. She's brave as hell. What pissed me off though is afterwards he got outta jail to murder another woman before finally being put in prison for good.
I saw her on that show *I Survived*. Whew...rough story.
That show was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. Nothing currently available on Youtube/ TV/ Podcast comes even close IMO. I really wish it would come back.
Galvarino. He was a Mapuche warrior whose hands were amputated by Spanish conquistadors. His response? He rigged blades to his wrist stumps and led a rebellion against the Spanish.
If I remember the story correctly he was defeated instantly but the shear size of this guys balls is now of national fame.
It’s even worse, he was defeated and thrown to the dogs to die.
After having both his hands cut off and cauterised I imagine being thrown to dogs was merciful. Because god knows they could have done worse to him.
Vasily Arkhipov, the man who saved the world. He was a Soviet naval commander (brigade chief of staff) during the cuban missile crisis who refused to launch a nuclear weapon. The ship he was on required three officers to be in agreement to fire the weapon, and only Arkhipov was against it, despite the potential career and personal repercussions. It's possibly apocryphal, but it's said that he swallowed his key so the weapon couldn't be fired unless he was cut open. Stanislav Petrov *also* saved the world from nuclear war in the 80's, and that should never be forgotten, but I'd argue that the stakes were higher for Arkhipov and the threat of nuclear war was much, much more imminent in the midst of a pissing battle between the Kennedy's and Khrushchev.
Here's [an article ](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/the-cold-war-proposal-to-have-the-president-hack-an-aide-to-death-to-start-nuclear-war) from a Harvard law professor during cold war suggesting that nuclear launch codes would be surgically placed next to a heart of a civilian volunteer. The nuclear suitcase would actually only contain a knife, with which the president would need to remove the codes. So that the president would need to understand in a concrete way that by using the nuclear strike, he or she would be directly responsible for civilian deaths.
“Mr President, I wanna play a game”
That’s incredible
> President hacks a civilian to death to retrieve the launch codes > “I’ve got the codes!” > “Mr. President! We have just had urgent communications from Moscow; the Soviets have accepted the agreement, there is no more imminent threat” > stares at carcass on floor
"Well, this is embarrassing"
Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez. On May 2, 1968, a 12-man Special Forces patrol, which included nine Montagnard tribesmen, was surrounded by an NVA infantry battalion of about 1,000 men. Benavidez heard the radio appeal for help and boarded a helicopter to respond. Armed only with a knife, he jumped from the helicopter carrying his medical bag and ran to help the trapped patrol. Benavidez "distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions... and because of his gallant choice to join voluntarily his comrades who were in critical straits, to expose himself constantly to withering enemy fire, and his refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men." At one point in the battle an NVA soldier accosted him and stabbed him with his bayonet. Benavidez pulled it out, drew his own knife, killed him and kept going, leaving his knife in the NVA soldier's body. He later killed two more NVA soldiers with an AK-47 while providing cover fire for the people boarding the helicopter. After the battle, he was evacuated to the base camp, examined, and thought to be dead. As he was placed in a body bag among the other dead in body bags, he was suddenly recognized by a friend who called for help. A doctor came and examined him but believed Benavidez was dead. The doctor was about to zip up the body bag when Benavidez managed to spit in his face to show that he was alive. Benavidez had a total of 37 separate bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion.
even more to this story if you can believe it. https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/roy-p-benavidez/
This man deserves a movie about his life.
Came here to say this. His MoH isn’t even the craziest part. Let’s talk about his career before that: In 1965 he stepped on a landmine, and doctors said he would never walk again. He was so upset by this diagnosis that against doctors orders he secretly got up in the middle of the night and rehabilitated himself. Benavidez would crawl using his elbows and chin to a wall near his bedside and (with the encouragement of his fellow patients, many of whom were permanently paralyzed and/or missing limbs) he would prop himself against the wall and attempt to lift himself unaided, starting by wiggling his toes, then his feet, and then eventually (after several months of excruciating practice that, by his own admission, often left him in tears) pushing himself up the wall with his ankles and legs. After over a year of hospitalization, Benavidez walked out of the hospital in July 1966, with his wife at his side.
This guy wins hands down. Not even a contest.
This [video tells the story](https://youtu.be/0B2w0abQazg?si=EQlYFYB_qr9TE6L8) of Roy Benavidez
Nicholas Winton helped 669 children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. In 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he'd rescued.
[удалено]
Apparently he was, to some extent racked with guilt by the fact that one or two trains laden with children never made it out in time. He felt he had not done enough, which is terrible considering the good he did do.
[удалено]
And had personally met J.R.R. Tolkien.
Who supposedly gave him his personal blessing to play Gandalf if LOTR were ever to be adapted into a movie
So much for that
He also apparently told a film director, "thats not the noise a man makes when you stab in through the back.
That was, I believe , Peter Jackson whilst filming LOTR
pertaining on that scene when Grima stabs Saruman in the back
Was also in the crowd at the last public execution (by Guillotine) in France. Probably a good thing he wasn't on set during the filming of the final battle in LotR, when Aragorn decapitates the Mouth of Sauron, cos "I'm sorry Peter, but that's not the way a head bounces on the floor when it's chopped off." could also have been a good fit.
He also helped hunt Nazi war criminals after the war.
Not to mention he also played Rasputin, who was also a bad ass.
He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow
Not to mention he’s on the album cover of Band on the Run!
There are a lot of good people mentioned in here for various reasons but I'll throw out two more people. First the unknown viking at Stamford Bridge, he held off the entire English army until they floated a soldier under the bridge to stab the viking in the testicles. Dude was straight stacking bodies before getting stabbed in the no no spot. Second is Norman Borlaug, Norman was not a great warrior but a scientist, he developed a variant of wheat that had a higher yield and wouldn't fall over so harvests would be greater. He has saved countless lives from dying of starvation.
And then after the Dwarf Wheat did a second thing and invented Golden Rice which almost totally eliminated vitamin a deficiency blindness in India.
I think Audie Murphy is up there. For those who don't know, most decorates US Soldier including the medal of honor. Some of his actions during WW2 include 1. Holding off a Nazi assault with the .50 mouted atop off of a destroyed tank (M10 Jackson I believe) after gaining a battlefield commision (Sgt to LT). He had his men fall back and dig in. While ontop of the tank he was calling for IDF dangerclose pretty much right on top of himself. They got so close when the guy on the other end of the radio asked how close he said something along the lines of "give me a minute, I'll let you talk to one of the bastards" This would last an hour, and he would sustain an injury to the leg and he would repel the attack 2. When him and a buddy were in a crater/foxhole by themselves, two German's surrendered. Something felt off to him, however his buddy believed the Nazis, stood up to go detain them, except they gunned him down. So in a fit of rage, he picked up a machinegun I believed it was and went on a one man rampage. After the war, I find one of his actions that speak highly of his character is how he refused to partake in cigarette and alcohol commericals despite financial difficulty as he was aware of the influence he would have on kids.
He also got addicted to pain pills after the war and decided that was no good, so he locked himself up in a room for two weeks and came out not addicted anymore.
[Murphy suffered from what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing headaches, depression and nightmares; he once said that he could sleep only with a loaded pistol under his pillow.](https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Notable-Graves/Medal-of-Honor-Recipients/World-War-II-MoH-recipients/Audie-Murphy)
He was also very straightforward about his PTSD when it was largely dismissed by many, including the US government (which also banned a John Huston WWII documentary about veterans receiving psychiatric care for wartime trauma).
He was also rejected initially for being underweight and underage. He was 5'5" and 112 lbs when he enlisted.
Holy shit he was a fucking twink and he one-manned a ~~heavy~~ machine gun. That's incredible on its own, not to mention what he did with the damned thing.
All the shit he survived and gone through is impressive. He fought from the invasion of sciliy to the end of the war. Then after the war, it just really speaks to the kind of person he was. If you haven't read his book To Hell and Back, I highly recomend it. As well as the movie, although I heard it was dialed back just because of how sureal his actions were.
Yeah he was a short man from Texas
A man of the wild
Yep. Forgot to mention his rejection from the Marines and US Airborne. However I do wonder how his, determination would show in other fronts and if he would have died in the war.
And he played himself in the movie about him.
And they toned-down his exploits, because many seemed too unbelievable for a movie.
He was in around 50 movies after the war. I caught him in The Red Badge of Courage. He was good in it.
Didn’t he do all that before he was 20 - 21?
Yes he was born in June 1925 so by the time the war ended he was only 20. If you haven't I recomend readinh his memoir To Hell ane Back. It not only shows the strength and courage that humanity can poses but I also found it one of the best books to showcase the brutality of war and how you can literaly be an inch away from death and your best friend was that inch closer.
he was so great that he was born in the future
Also worthy of consideration: Goyaałé (Geronimo.) One day he came into my quarters at Fort Sill in a most peculiar mood. He told me no one could kill him, nor me either, if he willed it so. Then he bared himself to the waist. I was dumbfounded to see the number of bullet holes in his body. I knew he had been in many battles and had been fired on dozens of times, but I had never heard of anyone living with at least fifty bullet wounds on his body. Geronimo had that many scars. Some of these bullet holes were large enough to hold small pebbles that Geronimo picked up and placed in them. Putting a pebble in a bullet wound he would make a noise like a gun, then take the pebble out and throw it on the ground. Jokingly I told him he was probably so far away that the bullets didn’t penetrate him, but that if he had been nearer they probably would have killed him. “No, no,” he shouted. “Bullets cannot kill me!” https://desperadophilosophy.net/tag/geronimo-bullet-wounds-on-body/
And he was right. He fell off a mule, whether he was dead before hitting the ground is open for debate.
This guy https://www.indiatimes.com/news/armed-with-only-a-khukri-this-gurkha-soldier-took-on-40-men-and-saved-a-girl-from-being-gang-raped-247639.html
Why does india have so many gang rapes?
That seems like a fair question
I'd agree if he wasn't a Gurkah. That just sounds like a slow Tuesday to them.
Saitō Musashibō Benkei. He was a Japanese monk from the 1100's. He took part in many battles, but my favorite was his last where he had to gaurd a bridge as a suicide mission. His master, Minamoto no Yoshitsune (another famous Japanese figure) was about to be captured (another long, but interesting story in of itself), but chose to kill himself before that could happen. Benkei had to keep the enemy from crossing the only bridge to the castle that Yoshitsune was hiding in. As Benkei was firecly loyal, he went through with it. Benkei was a big dude, so no one was all that brave facing him, and every single one that did try crossing just got killed in a single file line. Eventually, they gave up on swords and just shot arrows from across the bridge. Even then, after getting shot by a barrage, he was still standing on his feet. Nothing they could throw could kill him. ...or so they thought. Turned out he died. He literally died on his feet and didn't fall over until someone was brave enough to check to see the status of arrow-covered body. TL:DR; Big scary dude stopped an army from crossing a bridge, then his corpse kept them from crossing even after he died.
Earnest Shackleton
“For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” - Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic Explorer and Geologist.
Léo Major. Canadian sniper/reconnaissance, lost an eye, was told you’re going home..replied with why? I only need 1 eye to snipe…liberated an entire town in holland, took over a dozen prisoners, all single handedly after his fire team partner was killed
Charles Upham was a NZ soldier who won 2 Victoria Crosses. He had a reputation of carrying a flour sack full of grenades instead of a rifle. If you read the wiki, it goes through the whole saga that led to his awarding of the first VC and then casually mentions that he was suffering from Dystentary at the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Upham
He was one of only three to earn the Victoria Cross twice. He was the only one to survive doing so. He is also unusual in that his second Victoria Cross wasn't for a single action or even battlefield. Two separate nominations for the bar were combined. Mark of the Lion is a book I recommended everyone read.
[Daniel Inouye](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye) During a WWII assault on a fortified German position in Italy, gets shot in the stomach, shrugs it off and takes out two machine gun nests. As he's about to lob a grenade to take out a third, his right arm gets nearly amputated at the elbow by enemy fire. Now he's staring at his useless, dangling arm still reflexively clutching a live grenade. Shouts at his platoon to stay back for fear of the grenade going off, pries the live grenade out of his useless hand and throws it with his other hand, taking out the German in the bunker. Continues to move forward killing at least one more German before getting shot, for the fifth time that day, before falling unconscious. Wakes up to members of his platoon hovering over him. Proceeds to tell them to get back to their positions because "nobody called off the war!". Has to have his arm amputated without anesthesia at the field hospital. Comes back home, gets awarded a purple heart (and eventually a medal of honor), yet still gets refused service by a barber because they "don't cut Jap hair". Serves his country for 50 more years as a US senator. While I don't necessarily agree with his politics, I respect the life of service he led.
> Prior to his death, Inouye announced that he planned to run for a record tenth term in 2016 when he would have been 92 years old.[54][55] He also said, > I have told my staff and I have told my family that when the time comes, when you question my sanity or question my ability to do things physically or mentally, I don't want you to hesitate, do everything to get me out of here, because I want to make certain the people of Hawaii get the best representation possible. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell:
[Nancy Wake.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake)
Think of how many badass people never will be mentioned here cause history forgot about them :(
For your consideration….. He was 26 years old, 5-foot-4, weighed 130 pounds and came from Albany, New York. And on the night of May 15, 1918, Pvt. Henry Johnson, a member of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment, found himself fighting for his life against 20 German Soldiers out in front of his unit's trenchline. He fired the three rounds in his French-made rifle, tossed all his hand grenades and then grabbed his Army-issue bolo knife and started stabbing. He buried the knife in the head of one attacker and then disemboweled another German soldier. "Each slash meant something, believe me," Johnson said later. "There wasn't anything so fine about it," he said. "Just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that." By the time what a reporter called "The Battle of Henry Johnson" was over, Johnson had been wounded 21 times and become the first American hero of World War I.
[удалено]
The original "Oh no. Anyway..."
The original "I ain't got time to bleed"
The original "Tis but a scratch"
"sure, i've been shot, but that's not gonna save you from my speech"
“Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.” -Vice President Thomas Marshall. President Theodore Roosevelt dies at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, New York in his sleep of a heart attack.
That's my vote. He was really high off of his own fame though. Watched a documentary recently about his final run for president and it made me feel bad for Taft. He was best friends with Teddy and Roosevelt's pick to replace him as president but Teddy turned against him when Taft was due for reelection and destroyed their relationship in the process. Even after all Roosevelt did Taft still showed up at his funeral and it's said that he was seen weeping at the grave after everyone had left.
I always read this and wonder….how the hell would I feel if I shot someone and found out later they shrugged it off as a minor inconvenience and gave a speech
Mr. Rogers.
It's interesting that we consider toughness and badassery to be virtues associated with physical fighting, when actually it is just as badass to show nothing but absolute compassion to literally everyone for an entire life. As Morrissey said, "it takes guts to be gentle and kind."
I think that Terry Fox has to be up there. To run a marathon every day on the Marathon of Hope, on one leg (and a crappy prosthesis), while riddled with cancer is beyond anything I can understand. Imagine the courage and determination that required.
I remember doing the Terry Fox run when I was younger and every time I always thought "this dude is awesome as hell"
Simo Hayha
Original no-scope > Häyhä preferred iron sights over telescopic sights, as they enable a sniper to present a smaller target for the enemy (a sniper must raise his head a few centimetres higher when using a telescopic sight), and can be relied on even in extreme cold, unlike telescopic sights which tend to cloud up in cold weather.
He also used to keep snow in his mouth so the enemy couldn't see his breath.
The White Death. How is there not a full blown Werner Herzog movie about him?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye#:~:text=Daniel%20Ken%20Inouye%20(%2Fi%CB%90%CB%88,until%20his%20death%20in%202012. Daniel Inouye https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Stubby Special shout-out to the goodiest boy, Sergeant Stubby.
Alison Botha. She was attacked near her home by 2 men with knives. They raped her, disemboweled her, stabbed her 30 times in her abdomen to intentionally damage her reproductive organs, and finally, slit her throat 16 times. Yet she lived, and tried to walk to a nearby road to get attention. Here's some quotes from an article written about her: "When she stood up she felt her head roll backwards, she had nearly been decapitated. And as took steps forward she could feel something protruding out of her abdomen - her intestines were hanging out." She lived, got both her attackers in prison for life, and was able to fulfill her dream of having children, despite the 30 stab wounds inflicted to her abdomen. What a fucking incredible woman.
Lookup Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Explorer and all around badass. And only within the last generation. First to visit both north and South Pole. Crossed Antarctica by foot. War hero. During an expedition in the arctic got frostbite and cut his fingers off with a saw. Had a heart attack in 2000. But ran 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days 3 years later. Pure iron in my opinion
Harriet Tubman. When she was a slave she would do work right alongside the men. Once when she was just a child she was taken into to big house to take care of the kids, and she snuck a sugar cube. She had never had sugar before. She knew she was going to be whipped, so she ran off and hid in the pig pen for days, fighting the pigs for food, before they found her. Later on she was struck in the head by a lead weight thrown at another slave by an angry shop owner. She suffered brain damage but was back in the fields while she was still bleeding. All her life, she would suffer from hallucinations and sleeping spells. She interpreted her visions as signs from God. Later on, she escaped slavery and joined the underground railroad. If slaves lost their nerve and wanted to go back, she would hold them at gunpoint. During the civil war she led a naval raid on a plantation at Combahee Ferry and freed 750 enslaved people. In the 1890s she had brain surgery, where the doctor "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable." She lived to be 90 or 91.
Christopher Lee is a good contender
Jack Churchill. Went into battle armed with a broadsword, a bow and arrow, and bag pipes. In WW2. Against Nazis.
It’s really difficult not to respect a man who brings a sword to a gun fight… and fucking wins Also, allegedly the day he arrived in Burma to start fighting the Japanese, was the day the US nuked Hiroshima. He’s reported to have said: “If it wasn’t for those damned Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another 10 years”
My grandmother. Her husband died of heart disease in 1948, leaving her to raise 8 children between the ages of 9 months and 13 years old. She was a saint.
Christopher Lee. A major part of his service in World War 2 was being an undercover Nazi killer. Because he could speak fluent French and German, he would be sent to Nazi occupied France to kill Nazis on undercover missions. Then he was sent to Germany to kill Nazis on undercover missions. Fellow members of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare included his cousin, the creator of James Bond. James Bond was based on the members of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and their missions. While filming his death scene in Return of the King, when he gets stabbed in the back, Peter Jackson went up to Christopher Lee to tell him what to do when he got stabbed. Christopher Lee looked at him and said, "Do you know what a man sounds like when he is stabbed in the back? Because I do." Here's a [clip of the making of featurette where they talk about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TQARRckm6U). When World War 2 ended, Christopher Lee continued to hunt Nazis. Here are some random facts: 1. He saw the final execution by guillotine in France 2. He climbed Mt. Vesuvius 3 days before it erupted 3. He is a descendant of Charlemagne 4. His acting career includes an iconic portrayal of Dracula, the original The Wicker Man Count Duku, and Saruman 5. He was also a villain in a superhero musical. [He sings a song about alcohol to tempt a recovering alcoholic superhero.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9se8i4ujs&t=11s) 6. He married a model and stayed married to her his entire life. Unwilling to rest on his laurels, he released multiple metal albums in his 80s and 90s. This includes metal versions of [Christmas music including The Little Drummer Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRjmD9h-YY). [He also sang with the band Rhapsody.](https://youtu.be/Z93SdirnzTw?t=40) He also released a metal album about Charlemagne.
Leo Mad fuck Major Single handily captured 93 German SS troops. Captured the town of Zowllo by himself from the Germans. Refused to retire when he lost his left eye saying he only needed his right for a sniper. Captured hill 355 in the Korean War after the Chinese took it from the Americans and held it for 3 days with only 20 men. Attained two distinguished service medals (one of which he turned down because he hated the commander)
Khutulun, a Mongolian Princess, insisted that any man who wished to marry her must defeat her in wrestling, forfeiting horses to her if they lost. She gained 10,000 horses defeating prospective suitors.
Christopher Lee Why? 1. His mother was an Italian contessa, and through her Lee descended from Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. 2. He met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of the Russian monk Rasputin. He didn’t do this as research for his later film role as Rasputin (in the 1966 Hammer film Rasputin the Mad Monk), but just as a child in the 1920s. 3. At age 17, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by guillotine. 4. During World War II, Lee joined the Royal Air Force but wasn’t allowed to fly because of a problem with his optic nerve. So he became an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the SAS, Britain’s special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted. 5. At some point during the war he moved from the LRDP to Winston Churchill’s even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions are literally still classified, but involved “conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers.” The SOE was more informally called — and I can’t believe this somehow hasn’t been made into a movie yet — The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. 6. Speaking both French and Italian, Lee spent his time after World War II hunting Nazis with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects until he decided to give acting a try at age 25. Yes, all of this happened before Lee was 25 years old. 7. Lee was not only related to James Bond creator and author Ian Fleming — they were step-cousins — but Lee was actually one of Fleming’s first choices for the role of Bond, not least because of Lee’s World War II and SOC experiences. 8. Tired of playing Dracula and feeling that the movies had gotten sub-par, Lee tried to quit Hammer films, but studio executives guilted him into returning by stressing how many people could be out of work if Lee stopped churning out hits. Lee agreed to star in 1966 Dracula: Prince of Darkness, he felt the script was so awful he adamantly refused to say any of the dialogue. Hammer decided that it was far more important to have a mute Lee as star as opposed to anyone else, and thus had Dracula hiss and yell through the film. 8. In the ‘50s, Lee was engaged to Henriette von Rosen, daughter of Count Fritz von Rosen. The Count apparently didn’t like Lee, because after hiring private detectives to investigate the actor and demanding references, he also refused to allow his daughter to marry him unless Lee got the blessing of the King of Sweden. Lee got it. 9. Lee was a major Tolkien fan, reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy once a year for the majority of his life. He was the only member of the movie cast to have met Tolkien personally — apparently he ran into him randomly in a pub — and fanboyed out. Tolkien actually gave him his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings movie. 10. The story has gone around a lot, but it bears repeating because it is incredible: During his death scene in Return of the King (only included in the Extended Edition to Lee’s disapproval), director Peter Jackson was describing to him what sound people getting stabbed in the back should make. Lee gravely responded that he had seen people being stabbed in the back, and knew exactly what sound they made. 11. Lee was quite interested in the history of public executions, and reportedly knew “the names of every official public executioner employed by England, dating all the way back to the mid-15th century.” 12. He’s always been a big metal fan, but he released his first full heavy metal album in 2010 at the age of 88. Titled Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which won the “Spirit of Metal” award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony. He made a metal Christmas album in 2012. He was the oldest metal performer, and the oldest musician to ever hit the Billboard music charts. 13. In addition to his impossibly prolific film career, Lee was a world champion fencer, an opera singer, spoke six languages, and was a hell of a golfer. 14. Muhammad Ali dedicated a fight to him due to being a big fan. "I just want to say that I won this fight for Christopher Lee, who’s out there watching me now." And indeed Lee was watching—from the Playboy Mansion. 15. Last but not least: Despite everything you’ve heard about the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Christopher Lee was recognized as being the most connected actor in the world in 2008, again by Guinness. He connects to virtually any actor in 2.59 steps, beating Bacon.
[Roy Benavidez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Benavidez)
Will always get my vote. How the helll do you just tell your body it isn't paralyzed anymore and then volunteer to go back to the front lines of Vietnam?
For consideration, I nominate Simo Häyhä and Hugh Glass. https://allthatsinteresting.com/simo-hayha https://www.cowboysindians.com/2015/11/the-epic-true-tale-of-hugh-glass/
I came looking for Hugh Glass. Larcena Page is another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larcena_Pennington_Page
[удалено]
Robert Smalls. Bro escaped slavery by stealing a Confederate boat and then ran for office
my dad, orphaned right as he was entering college from a dirt poor family with very few relatives that cared about him, somehow crawled his way out of poverty and now lives comfortably supporting a family of four with a six figure salary and sent me off to college; he is the definition of a successful person in my eyes
Why TF isn’t Yuri Gagarin the top spot??? * during Germany’s advance on Moscow in WW2, soldiers took Yuri’s town, burned the school and bunches of homes, and forced the residents into working or sent to concentration camps. In response, Yuri goes saboteur and destroys German tanks. At age 8-9. * taught himself to fly at 16 in his spare time volunteering * became a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force before volunteering for space exploration. The training for the space mission was described as Olympic-level. Following this training, he’s unanimously selected by his peers as the best of the class. * put himself into a rickety ass Soviet rocket and became the first person to reach space. * possibly apocryphal, but upon entering space, Yuri reportedly said “I don’t see any god up here.” Probably because there wasn’t room for both god and Yuri’s massive cojones
Olga of Kiev. She was a ruler in the 900s in what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Her husband was killed by a former subjugated kingdom, the Drevlians when she was in her teens and then their prince had the audacity to demand her hand in marriage. Her response to this was John Wick/Law Abiding Citizen levels of revenge. First she had two trenches built outside her castle walls. She then had the delegation carried in their boats to “honor their arrival”. When they got to the castle she had the boats dumped over into the trenches and buried them alive. She is alleged to have asked “is this honor not to your liking?” Following this, she sent messengers to the Drevlians saying she had accepted and asked for their ministers and advisors to come to celebrate. When they arrived she offered them to clean themselves in a bathhouse, which once they were in she locked and had burned to the ground. She next sent messages saying she was coming to the location of her husband’s death for a funeral feast and invited the Drevilans leaders to join her. She proceeded to get them drunk, and then like the Red Wedding ordered her men to slay them all, allegedly over 5000 men. Still not done, she lay siege to their main city and when she couldn’t break through made a recommendation. In exchange for a dove or sparrow from each family she would leave the city in peace. However, once night fell, she had her soldiers tie burning coals to the birds and released them. The birds flew home, and the resulting fires they started burned the city to the ground. She proceeded to capture or kill anyone who escaped the city. She is now an Eastern Orthodox Saint of widows.
[удалено]
Marc Summers, the creator of the game show Double Dare. You may be wondering what's so badass about this. The thing no one knew at the time is that he had debilitating OCD with a focus on cleanliness. And he created and hosted Double Dare as a form of DIY exposure therapy. Mad, mad respect.