1Sean Connery
Sean Connery once fought and won against six gang members after they tried to mug him. The gang gave him great respect after the defeat and Connery became known as a “hard man.”
2. In 2006, a man having a seizure on New York subway tracks was rescued by a stranger named Wesley Autrey who was taking his two daughters home before work. He jumped down onto the man and compressed him down by laying on him as five cars passed over him.
3. In 2006, a soldier named Ross A. McGinnis was manning the gunner's hatch of his unit's Humvee when an insurgent threw a grenade inside. Instead of leaping to safety, McGinnis shouted a warning, jumped inside and threw himself on the grenade. He was killed instantly, saving his team. He was 19.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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6Julie d’Aubigny
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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11Vasili Arkhipov
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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. New Zealand Victoria Cross recipient James Ward won it for actions during a raid over Germany in July 1941. When his aircraft caught on fire, his copilot told him to try to put out the fire. Ward crawled out onto the wing, several thousand feet in the air, tore holes in the aircraft’s fabric with a fire ax to give himself hand and foot-holes, and smothered the flames out with a canvas cover. The bomber made it back to the United Kingdom.
15. John L. Sullivan a.k.a. ‘Overly manly man’ was a champion bare-knuckle boxer and known for his trademark phrase upon entering a saloon, “I can lick (beat) any son-of-a-bitch in the house.” He always did – and he brought the house a round. He won the world Bareknuckle Championship title in 1889 despite arriving at the fight after a long night of drinking, partying and scoring with the chicks. Sullivan showed up looking like he’d gone 36 hours without sleep (which he might have), drank whiskey and tea in the corner between the rounds. He barfed over the side of the ring in the middle of the 44th round, but kept in there, pushed it to the limit and won the fight in the 75th round when his opponent was too exhausted and pummeled to continue fighting.
16Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was once involved in a plane crash in the desert in Syria. With two broken ribs, he repeatedly went back into the burning plane to evacuate passengers. He then organized search teams to look for civilization.
17. Maximilian Kolbe, a priest in Auschwitz volunteered to die in the place of a stranger who cried out “My wife! My children!” In the underground bunker, he kept all the others calm who were sentenced to be starved to death. He was the last one to die when he was executed by carbolic acid injection.
18. In 2014, an 8-year-old boy named Tyler Doohan saved 6 members of his family from his burning house before finally succumbing to the fire himself while trying to save the last victim, his disabled grandfather.
19. In 2009, a skydiving instructor named Dave Hartsock took a 54-old-woman on a tandem skydive. After the main chute failed and the second got tangled he told the woman to lift her feet. He then saved her life, by rotating their position, placing his body under hers to act as a cushion on impact. Both survived the accident, however, Hartsock is now paralysed from the neck down.
20. Albert Battel, a German officer serving in the Wehrmacht during WWII, commanded his whole unit to protect Jews and threatened the SS to kill them if they crossed a bridge into a Jewish ghetto to round them up.
21Erwin Rommel
During WW2, German field marshal Erwin Rommel would often personally pilot a reconnaissance aircraft over the battle to view the situation. Although Rommel did not have a pilot's license, his skill with machinery made him a competent pilot, and none of the Luftwaffe officers had the nerve to stop him.
22. Yitzhak Ganon endured Mengele removing a kidney without anesthesia and survived Auschwitz because he was the 201st person in line for a 200-person gas chamber.
23. In July 1996 , a British nursery teacher named Lisa Potts saved a classroom of children from an attacker with a machete. She was awarded with the George Medal, the second-highest honor that a civilian can receive, the following year.
24. Boudica was a Celtic queen who in 60 A.D. led an uprising against the Romans, razing three cities and killing 80,000 Romans. This was an act of revenge for Rome annexing her kingdom after her husband died, flogging her publicly and ordering her daughters raped. Rome needed more than three legions to subdue her.
25. In 1651, a Dutchman named Jan de Doot removed his own bladder stone with a kitchen knife. He pulled it out through an incision he made in his perineum. It was the size of an egg and weighed a quarter pound. He lived for years after and had the stone plated in gold.
