26MMA fighter Matt Hamill
In 2015, MMA fighter Matt Hamill noticed a car speeding down the wrong side of the highway. So he turned around, chased the car, and safely forced it into a grassy area. He then punched out a window to stop the car, potentially saving the child passenger's and the inebriated mother's lives.
27. At least twice, CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta has been on location reporting but needed to step in as a neurosurgeon: once on a Marine in Iraq and the other on a little girl injured during the Haitian earthquake. The Marine was shot in the head during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq. Without proper tools, Gupta performed the brain surgery with a Black and Decker handheld drill. The Marine lived.
28. In 2009, four prisoners at the Hillsborough County Jail in Florida saved a corrections officer from another prisoner. The inmates who rescued him were in prison for assault, armed robbery, home invasion, murder, and sex offenses, but they saved the deputy because he treated them like human beings.
29. In 2012, Anthony Omari took a machete to the face from attacking robbers while defending an under-resourced Kenyan orphanage his family runs. He saved 37 orphans that day. The attack was in revenge for the previously foiled robbery, when Anthony threw a hammer at one of the thieves.
30. 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.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Officer John Perry
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.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. 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.
35. 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.
36John Turner & John Diefenbaker
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.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. During the 2011 Japanese earthquake, 50 workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant did not leave even though 750 others had been evacuated. For four days, they kept the reactor from melting down until backup arrived, saving countless lives.
41Aitzaz Hasan
A 15-year-old Pakistani boy named Aitzaz Hasan died in 2014 when he bravely confronted a suicide bomber who was walking toward his school. This caused the bomb to go off early, killing Aitzaz. His action saved the lives of hundreds of students.
42. Edward Loder is the most decorated man in the Boston Fire Department's history. After his first decade of service, he was assigned to Rescue One because of his reputation for being tough. In 1990, he saved a mentally unstable woman from jumping from her 16th-floor hotel room by rappelling down from the roof of the hotel by a guideline and tackling her away from the ledge right when she was about to jump. In 1993, he caught a mentally ill patient with one hand right after he jumped and had to hang on to the rescue ladder with the other hand. He had to hold on to the jumper until the ladder was lowered.
43. In 1968, big-wave surfer Eddie Aikau was selected to be the first lifeguard at Waimea Beach on Oahu. During his time as a lifeguard, not a single person died, and he rescued over 500 people, often braving waves of 30 feet (9.1 meters) or higher. The phrase "Eddie would go" was coined after him because he became famous for saving people from the big waves. When no one else would go, Eddie would go.
44. Casey Jones was an American railroader who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. In 1895, he saved the life of a young girl by standing on the moving train's cowcatcher and picking the girl up off the track. In 1900, he was involved in a train crash with a stalled freight train. Having realized a collision would occur, Casey ordered his colleague off the train and remained in control of the engine to minimize the impact. Except for himself, this saved the lives of all passengers.
45. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, a female British missionary in China named Gladys May Aylward protected orphans and soldiers and spied for the Chinese. Wounded in a strafing attack and beaten with a gun, she escaped, rescued 94 orphans, and fled with them from Yangcheng to safety at Sian (240 miles over mountains and a river).
