35 Absolute Badasses You Never Knew About – Part 4

Franz Von Werra was a Nazi POW who was transferred to Canada to deter his multiple escapes and recaptures. He escaped again in less than a month from Canada, traveled through the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, and Italy to become the only Western held POW to return to combat.

During World War 1 Henry Johnson saved his friend from over 20 German soldiers all by himself using his rifle as a club until its butt splintered and then proceeded to charge at them with his only remaining weapon a bolo knife. He was still fighting when more French and American troops arrived on the scene, causing the retreat.

Russian navy officer, Vasili Arkhipov, opposed his commanding officer’s decision to launch a nuclear torpedo in response to US practice depth charges during the Cuban Missile Crisis, thus averting a nuclear war and saving the world.

Known as “The Valiant Ladies of Potosi”, Ana Lezama de Urinza and Dona Eustaquia de Sona were two aristocratic 17th century lesbian lovers, who disguised themselves as cowboys and fought to clean up Potosi in Peru, one of the toughest towns in all of South America.

A girl named Miki Endo sacrificed her life in the2011 Tohono tsunami in Japan to warn people of the oncoming tsunami on the Emergency Broadcast System and saved thousands of lives. She did not leave her spot and kept broadcasting until she was swept away.

In 1975, a decorated Marine named Oliver Sipple saved President Gerald Ford from assassination when he noticed as a bystander that a woman next to him had drawn and leveled a pistol at Ford. His life was then ruined when the media outed him as gay.

In 2006, a 22-year-old Skydiver named Robert Cook saved his student’s life by acting as a human shield. Knowing that the plane was in free fall, he calmed the girl by talking to her, wrapped his arms around her and supported her head, before twisting his body mid-crash so that he took the force of the impact. She survived, but everyone else on the plane died.

Julie d’Aubigny was a 17th-century French noble opera singer and very good swordswoman who beat men in duels. She once got challenged to duels by three separate men for kissing a woman at a ball. She also once rescued her lesbian lover from a convent by burning it down. She was pardoned by the king.

Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., the first African American to reach the rank of four-star general, hand an Old West-style standoff with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who complied and pulled back after James demanded him to move his hand away from his gun.

In 1976, a Japanese ultranationalist porn actor named Mitsuyasu Maeno died after flying a plane into the house of a yakuza don to punish him for accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Lockheed and betraying the samurai code.