1Stephen Toboz
In 2002, Navy Seal Stephen “Turbo” Toboz was part of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan to rescue a captured teammate. They were ambushed. Turbo was shot in the leg shattering his bones, making a fist-sized hole in his calf. He managed to crawl in 3 feet of snow, fighting pain, blood loss, and the -20 degree weather, all while providing cover fire for his team. They made it out 18 hours later and Turbo lost 3 liters of blood. While recovering, annoyed by the slow pace of his recovery, he asked the doctor to amputate his leg and give him a bionic leg. Nine months later, he rejoined his team and took part in active missions.
2. Theodore Roosevelt was an avid boxer and became the first American ever to receive a brown belt in Judo. He lined the White House basement with training mats and sparred with anyone that was willing including boxing champion John Sullivan, his wife, and a Swiss minister.
3. When a Californian elderly care home went bankrupt, about 16 elderly residents were abandoned. All the staff left, but a janitor and the cook named Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez stayed behind to care for the residents at their own expenses.
4. 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 and rescued 94 orphans and fled with them from Yangcheng to safety at Sian (240 miles over mountains and river).
5. Ten days after the Chernobyl 4 disaster, further risk of massive thermal explosion was identified. Three men, now known as the “The Chernobyl divers” volunteered to swim through the radioactive pooled water under leaked reactor to find and release the safety valves. The water came up to their knees but the men lived long lives.
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6Kenneth Byrd
Three men forced their way into the house of a 67-year-old man named Kenneth Byrd. They intended to rape his granddaughter and steal the money in his safe. He agreed to open the safe and take out the cash, but instead took out his gun and shot all of them. One of them shot him 8 times. One of them died and the other two were injured and apprehended. Byrd recovered.
7. Pier Donia was a Dutch farmer when the Civil War broke out in the Netherlands in 1515. His wife and children were killed by the king’s soldiers. He swore to take revenge and despite having no experience with a boat or a gun, he formed a band of pirates. By the end of 1515, he captured 28 Dutch navy boats and soon started burning villages of high-class citizens. When King Charles V sent his entire fleet to stop him, Pier captured them all. He carried with him a 7-foot long sword that could behead multiple people with one swing. After realizing that he became the very thing he’d set out to defeat, he retired and died of natural causes a year later.
8. Cameron Lyle, a college senior track and field athlete was awarded the NCAA’s Award of Valor in 2013 for ending his collegiate career one month early, ending his chances for a gold medal, in order to be a bone marrow donor to a 28-year-old father with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
9. In 2008, a dog named Sophie Tucker survived 4 months lost at sea off the coast of Australia. She fell overboard while sailing in bad weather with her owners. She then swam 5 nautical miles in stormy, shark-infested water to an island where she survived for 16 weeks by hunting wild goats.
10. 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.
11Boudica
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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16Dave Hartsock
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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21James Ward
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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.
