Historical Badass Archive – Part 5: 42 More Badasses Who’ll Truly Inspire You

In 2015, when a Montana man named Chase DelIwo came face-to-face with a 400-pound grizzly bear, he used a tip he had received from his grandmother (large animals have bad gag reflexes) to save his life. He shoved his right arm down the bear’s throat and the bear left him. He survived with a couple of hundred stitches to his head and a punctured leg.

When Jimmy Carter was a young nuclear office in the US Navy, they sent him to help a partial meltdown in a Canadian nuclear reactor. They built an exact copy of the reactor to train with and then lowered him into the still extremely radioactive reactor to take it apart one piece at a time.

Allstate’s “Mr. Mayhem” Dean Winters has survived 17 surgeries and 9 amputations, including his nose and thumb. He also once died for 2.5 minutes en route to the hospital after contracting a bacterial infection.

Gotz von Berlichingen was a 16th century Imperial Knight who during one of the battles lost his right hand. He went on to build a new hand out of metal with adjustable fingers with the ability to hold small and large objects, anything from a playing card to a sword. He became a mercenary and fought for the highest bidders, ransomed people and even robbed merchants. With his ill-gotten gains, he eventually bought the Hornberg castle and continued warring into his 60s.

Dian Wei was the personal bodyguard to the Wei King Cao Cao during 1st century Imperial China. His last stand took place during the Battle of Wancheng. The local governor had launched a surprise nighttime attack on the King. When the assassins approached the gates they found Dian Wei at the entrance with a pair of 40-pound axes. He killed at least 20 enemies before another group of assassins attacked him from behind and brought him down, but the King had managed to escape.

Donnie Yen who is known for playing Wing Chun grandmaster Yip Man in the 2008 film Ip Man once beat up a gang of 8 men who were harassing him and his girlfriend at a nightclub in Hong Kong. The men had to be hospitalized.

During the Afghanistan War, when his team was ambushed, outnumbered, and under fire, British Corporal Sean Jones ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge across 80 meters of open ground against Taliban forces. Enemy forces scattered, fleeing the fight due to this unexpected move.

During the Second Boer War, Robert Baden-Powell was ordered to secure Mafeking for the British. Because his unit was running low on explosives, he ordered his men to start burying mysterious boxes filled with sand around town’s perimeter, telling people and enemy sympathizers that they were powerful landmines. After running low on barbed wire, he just hammered wooden posts around town border and his men acted around them like there were real barbed wire strung from them. From enemy positions, it looked convincing. They never attacked and Powell held Mafeking for 217 days.

Colonel Eduardo Abaroa Hidalgo was a Bolivian hero during the War of the Pacific between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. He faced death with a “Yo Gramma” joke. After a standoff with Chile, an injured and outnumbered Abaroa was asked to surrender. He refused to give up the fight and responded, “Surrender? Your grandmother should surrender, you bastard!” He died a martyr to his country.

During the Battle of Gallipoli during World War 1, Turkish Lt. Colonel Mustafa Kemal learned that allied ships were advancing to his coast and he ordered his men to march there. When he arrived there, he saw Allied warships making landfall and a group of Turkish soldiers running towards him, away from the fight. He told them, “I’m not ordering you to attack! I’m ordering you to die!” In spite of smaller numbers and lesser ammunition, Turks won the battle and Mustafa Kemal went on to become president of the Turkish Republic.