1Frances Kelsey
An FDA official named Frances Kelsey saved the US from a generation of children with birth defects such as flipper-like arms and feet by repeatedly blocking the authorization of a drug named Thalidomide in the 1960s that was already approved for use in pregnant women in Europe.
2. A woman named Irena Sendler worked as a plumber in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War 2 and saved over 2,500 Jewish children, smuggling many of them out in her tool box. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but lost to Al Gore.
3. During World War II, a stockbroker named Nicholas Winton saved the lives of 669 Czechoslovakian Jewish children who were destined for Nazi death camps by taking them to England. He refused to take credit, and his accomplishment went unnoticed for 50 years until his wife found a scrapbook of the children that he saved and gave it to the BBC in 1988.
4. Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer was a Dutch woman who saved 10,000 Jewish children during World War II by charming and paying off Dutch train workers and German officers, including a young Adolf Eichmann.
5. In 2006, a teacher named Jencie Fagan stopped a school shooter by hugging the shooter. The shooter dropped the gun, and the teacher held him firmly against her until other teachers arrived to help.
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6Minnie Freeman
In 1888, a Nebraska teacher named Minnie Freeman saved all of her students after a freak blizzard struck. The winds were so strong that the roof and door blew off the school. She roped the kids together and led them over a mile in whiteout conditions to the nearest farmhouse.
7. Marcel Marceau was a French mime who used his acting skills to save Jewish children during World War II. He smuggled them over the Swiss border and would mime to keep them happy and get them to stay quiet. He saved at least 70 children.
8. In 2012, a German kindergarten teacher named Ina Koenig jumped down a 75-foot mine shaft when one of her 3-year-old students accidentally fell down it. It was filled with cold water. For more than 2 hours, she kept the child's head above the deluge, saving his life, until help arrived.
9. Liviu Librescu, who was born in Romania and raised in Israel and the United States, was a scientist, engineer, professor, teacher, and Holocaust survivor. During the Virginia Tech shootings, he held the door of his classroom while the gunman kept shooting through the door. His bravado ended up saving 22 of his 23 students.
10. Vince Coleman was a railway dispatcher in Halifax during the 1917 Great Halifax Explosion. He gave up his life in order to warn an incoming train of an imminent explosion. His telegraph said, "Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys." He saved 300 lives.
11Deaf lifeguard Leroy Colombo
Leroy Colombo was a deaf lifeguard who overcame being paralyzed as a child by swimming. He saved more than 900 lives in his career, which is a record. His swimming talent and use of sight rather than sound to identify drowning swimmers allowed him to save people other lifeguards would have missed.
12. Miki Endo, a Japanese emergency worker, saved thousands of lives during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami by warning the people of Minamisanriku via the Emergency Broadcast System. She did not leave her spot and was eventually killed in the subsequent disaster.
13. Welles Crowther was a 24-year-old equities trader who saved 12 people during the 911 attacks and went back in to save more before never being seen again.
14. In 2010, a retired Gurkha soldier of the Indian Army, Bishnu Shrestha, was returning to his village in a train when it was hijacked by armed robbers. When they tried to rape a young teen in front of him, he brandished his Kukri blade and attacked all 40 captors. He managed to kill three men and injure eight before he was subdued. The rest of the robbers quickly panicked and dispersed.
15. In 2001, breast milk from a woman named Faustina Mercedes saved 16 people lost at sea. Two days after their food ran out, she told her sister to try her milk. She felt better and offered it to everyone else. The 8 men and 7 women took turns sucking her breasts and were able to survive for 7 more days until currents pushed the boat to shore.
16Pierlucio Tinazzi
An Italian security guard named Pierlucio Tinazzi is credited with saving 10 people from the 1999 Mont Blanc Tunnel fire. He donned breathing equipment and drove into the tunnel on his motorcycle. It was later found melted into the pavement. He died attempting to rescue a truck driver after dragging his unconscious body behind a fire door.
17. Shavarsh Karapetyan, a 17-time world swimming champion from Armenia, was on a 12-mile run in 1976 when he heard a crash and saw a bus sink into a lake. He dove 33 feet deep, rescuing 20 people, one at a time, from the frigid and sewage-infested water. His career as a professional swimmer ended after this heroic act due to two-sided pneumonia and blood contamination that put him in a coma. This didn't stop him from saving more people nine years later, when he rushed into a burning hospital to save people trapped inside. He suffered severe burns during the rescue.
18. During the Rwandan Genocide, an old Rwandan woman named Zura Karuhimbi saved the lives of over 100 Tutsis by hiding them in her home and scaring away Hutus by pretending to be a witch and saying her home was haunted and full of ghosts.
19. A stationmaster named Ghulam Dastagir at the Bhopal railway station refused to leave his post during the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy. He prevented any trains from stopping at the station, saving thousands of lives even as his colleagues started dying around him. He survived the disaster, but spent the next two decades in and out of hospitals as a result of his prolonged exposure to the gas.
20. During the Chernobyl meltdown, Oleksander Lelechenko was the deputy chief of the electrical shop. To keep his younger coworkers from being exposed to radiation, he himself went through radioactive water and debris three times to make emergency repairs. After receiving first aid, he again returned to the plant and worked for several more hours. He died in a Kiev hospital less than two weeks after the disaster.
21Robert Patrick
Actor Robert Patrick was involved in a boating accident on Lake Erie in 1984. He nearly drowned after swimming for nearly 3 hours while helping to rescue the other people stranded at the accident site.
22. In 2009, an Italian neurosurgeon named Claudio Vitale had a heart attack while performing surgery on a patient. He kept going when he realized that if he stopped, his patient would never recover. Half an hour after finishing the surgery, the doctor underwent an angioplasty.
23. In 1907, a Mexican railroad brakeman named Jesús Gracía saved the entire town of Nacozari by single-handedly driving a damaged and burning train containing dynamite six kilometers away from the town before it finally exploded, killing him.
24. Iqbal Masih was a kid in Pakistan who was sold into bondage. At the age of 10, he escaped the shackles of bonded labor, freeing over 3000 children who were trapped in the same carpet factory he worked in. He was responsible for bringing down Pakistan's carpet exports by $34 million and was therefore murdered in 1995 at the age of 13.
25. Richard Zednik, the goalie for the Buffalo Sabres, had his carotid artery cut by another player's skate in 1989. This caused him to lose so much blood that eleven fans passed out, two more had heart attacks, and three players threw up on the ice. The team trainer rushed onto the ice, reached into his wound, and simply pinched the artery with his fingers until additional help arrived, saving his life.
