40 Acts of Valor: Stories of Selfless Heroes

After the 2011 Japanese nuclear plant in Fukushima was disabled by an earthquake and tsunami double whammy, elderly Japanese people volunteered to do repairs to save young people from radiation exposure.

On September 11, 2001, Officer John Perry of the NYPD went to headquarters to file his retirement paperwork. When he heard the explosion at the World Trade Center, he went there right away. Later, when one of the towers fell, he was killed. He was the only off-duty officer to be killed on 9/11.

Despite intense Nazi surveillance during World War II, a Catholic priest named Don Arrigo Beccari managed to smuggle 120 Jewish children to safety. When the Nazis captured him and tortured him for months, he still kept quiet. He was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" in 1964.

The world's largest seed bank, which botanist Nikolai Vavilov established, was located in Leningrad in 1941 during the siege of the city. As the Germans surrounded the city, forcing mass starvation, nine Soviet scientists refused to eat from the collection. They slowly died of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants and refused to destroy "the future of Russia." The potato seeds they had in there would then go on to help spawn the world's current blight-free potato stock.

In 2001, when a Florida man named Vance Flosenzier noticed that a 7-foot-long shark had his 8-year-old nephew Jesse Arbogast by the arm, he grabbed onto the shark and wrestled the animal barehanded out of the water, while others freed Jesse and brought him to shore. He wrestled the shark for more than 10 minutes to keep it away from other children. Then they killed the shark and pried it open to retrieve Jesse's severed arm, which the surgeons were able to reattach.

In 2017, six Georgia inmates out on work detail saved a Deputy Sheriff who collapsed unconscious. They could have taken his gun and fled with the work van, but they used the deputy's phone to call 911. The sheriff's office gave the men a pizza party with homemade dessert and recommended reduced sentences.

Future Canadian Prime Minister John Turner was on vacation in Barbados in 1965 when he noticed someone struggling in the rough surf at the beach. Being a strong swimmer, he instinctively entered the water and unknowingly saved the life of former Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.

In 1569, a man named Dirk Willems was jailed in the Netherlands for his devotion to being an anabaptist. He soon escaped from prison, but when he saw that the guard pursuing him fell through the ice, Willems turned around to save the guard. He was then recaptured, tortured, and killed.

In 2008, Florida wildlife officers shot a 375-pound bear with a tranquilizer as it managed to wander into a residential area. The panicked bear ran towards the ocean and started drowning. That's when a man named Adam Warwick dove into the ocean to rescue it. Grabbing the bear by its neck, he brought it ashore. A couple of times the bear tried lunging at Adam to climb on top of him to stay afloat. Adam brought the bear to shore and only suffered minor cuts and scrapes.

Don Ritchie was an Australian who lived across the street from the most famous suicide spot in Australia. He officially rescued 160 people from suicide as of 2009 over a 45-year period, although his family claims the number is closer to 500. He would strike up a conversation with people contemplating suicide and invite them to his house for tea. He died in 2012 at the age of 85.