1SAS Sniper
In November 2015, an unnamed SAS sniper saved hundreds of lives by firing three well-aimed shots killing five terrorists from a distance of 800 meters in Mosul, Iraq. He shot the first jihadi in the chest, detonating his explosive device and killing him instantly, along with two nearby ISIS guards. The second terrorist was killed with a headshot and the third jihadi also died when his explosive vest was set off by a shot to the chest.
2. When James Robinson’s Charlie battalion came under fire from 400-men strong Vietcong battalion, he ran around the battlefield killing snipers with a grenade launcher, rescuing wounded medics and soldiers (suffering multiple gunshot wounds) and distributing water and ammunition. When an enemy machine gun opened fire on them, Robinson charged the gunner with a grenade in each hand. He was shot in the leg with a tracer round, causing his pants to catch fire. He tore his pants off and continued charging the gunner. He was shot twice more in the chest (5 total bullet wounds) but managed to hurl a grenade at the gunner’s nest. He received Medal of Honor posthumously.
3. Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old British schoolgirl, save her family and 100 other tourists from the 2004 Asian tsunami, by recognizing signs of tsunamis she had learned in geography lesson two weeks before.
4. In 1984, Robert Patrick (T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day), swam for 3 hours to rescue people after a boating accident on Lake Erie, nearly drowning in the attempt.
5. Future King Henry V was struck in the face by an arrow in his first battle leading soldiers. Rather than leaving the field, he reportedly stated that “I would rather die than stain my soldierly reputation by flight. He was 16 at that time.
Latest FactRepublic Video:
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
6Nonstop Runner
In 1986, during the Namibian War of Independence, two Namibian guerrillas realized they were being followed and split up. One of them managed to escape. The trail of the second one was picked up by Special Forces trackers who tracked him in armored carriers. Despite this, he actually managed to increase the distance between himself and trackers. Even when helicopters were called, they could not keep up with him. They tracked him for 230 miles over five days with no evidence that he stopped to sleep. The only thing they ever found were used syringes. They found spots where he had collapsed from exhaustion, shot himself with methamphetamines, gotten back up and started running again. They never caught him.
7. Despite never having received naval training or participating in naval combat prior to the war, and constantly being outnumbered and out supplied during the Battle of Myeongnyang in 1597, Admiral Yi Sun Shin defeated 333 Japanese ships with only 13 Korean ships.
8. Captain Jonathan R. Davis in a well-documented incident single-handedly killed 11 armed bandits who ambushed him in 1854. He killed 7 with his dual-wielding revolvers and then finished the remaining 4 with a Bowie knife. He sustained only two slight flesh wounds.
9. On the first day of the assault on Iwo Jima, Corporal Tony Stein cleared multiple enemy pillboxes using his custom M1919 machine gun which he named “Stinger.” During the assault, he made a total of 8 trips back to the beach to reload on ammunition and carried a wounded soldier on his back each trip. He was killed in action 10 days later and posthumously received Medal of Honor.
10. Owen J. Baggett became legendary as being the only person to have downed a Japanese aircraft with an M1911 pistol. He shot the pilot in the head while he was parachuting down.
11El Cid
El Cid was a military leader in the Middle Ages who was so feared that after his death, his embalmed body was placed on a horse and sent into battle causing the enemy to flee.
12. During one of their numerous battles in the early 1700s, an unnamed South Carolina Catawba warrior was ambushed by a New York Seneca war party. He took off and shot and killed seven Senecas before being captured. They stripped him naked, tied him up and marched him back to New York, allowing people to whip him as he passed. When they untied him after traveling 500 miles, he dashed off into the nearby river, swam it without popping up once and took off into the woods. That night he killed the Seneca search party that was sent after him. The Senecas decided he was a wizard and gave up. He made his way back to South Carolina, dug up the bodies of the seven Senecas he had killed when he was caught and scalped them.
13. In 1922, a fur trapper named Ben Cochrum was attacked by a wolf pack in Manitoba. After shooting 7, beating four more to death, and shattering his rifle stock, he gave up and was torn to pieces. His body was found surrounded by the remains of the 11 wolves he had killed fighting for his life.
14. In 2015, MMA fighter Matt Hamill noticed a car speeding down the wrong side of the highway. So he turned his car around, gave a chase and safely forced the car to a grassy area. He then punched out a window to stop the car, potentially saving the child passenger and the inebriated mother’s lives.
15. John Clem was a drummer boy in the Union Army during the Civil War, who at the age of 11 shot a confederate colonel who had demanded his surrender. Promoted to sergeant, he became the youngest NCO in Army history. He retired in 1915 as a general and the last actively serving veteran of the Civil War.
16Joan Pujol Garcia
During World War 2, a Spaniard named Joan Pujol Garcia was a double agent that spied on Germany for the British. He was supposed to recruit spies in Britain for the Germans. Eventually, the Germans were funding a network of 27 fictional agents and decided they had enough “agents” spying for them in Britain and didn’t want anymore. He played an important role in the deceptive operation intended to mislead the Germans about the D-day invasions. He received the medal of service from both the Allies and Axis.
17. Harald Hardrada was a Viking who fled from his native Norway to Russia, then went on to become an elite guardsman in Eastern Roman Empire and fought in Iraq. He then went back to Russia to marry a princess, and arrived back in Norway as a king and finally invaded England with his army.
18. The real Grizzly Adams caught a 1-year-old brown bear. He then taught her to follow him around, carry a pack and then to pull a loaded sled. She even cuddled up near Adams to keep him warm in freezing condition. Eventually, the bear that he named Lady Washington allowed Adams to ride on her back.
19. In 1941, the world’s largest seed bank (Created by botanist Nikolai Vavilov) was housed in Leningrad. As the Germans surrounded the city forcing mass starvation, scientists inside the vault refused to eat from the collection, slowly dying of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants.
20. Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone) survived a three-story fall, a gunpowder explosion, drinking a bowl of sulfuric water, a near-poisoning due to furniture varnish, and falling into a speeding river, all before the age of nine. His neighbors called him “little Sax, the ghost.” He also suffered at least one assassination attempt due to the dislike of his new invention (saxophone) among instrument makers.
21Valentin Grimaldo
In 1996, a Texas man named Valentin Grimaldo was bitten by a venomous coral snake. He proceeded to kill the reptile by biting off its head and then used its skin as a tourniquet, a move that saved his life.
22. Matt Urban was nicknamed “The Ghost” by Germans during World War 2 for his habit of coming back from fights that would kill normal men. During one fight he blew up a German tank with a bazooka; took a 31mm tank-gun round to his leg, but continued fighting. The next day he suffered another wound and was evacuated. When he woke up in the hospital, he limped his way back with a cane and manned a machine gun under heavy fire. Days later he took shrapnel to the-chest and survived. After recovering, he took a shot to the neck, but survived again, only losing his voice. He survived the war and lived for another 51 years.
23. During the first major raid against the Germans in 1941, Canadian chaplain John Weir Foote was told to sit it out. He dared his officer to arrest him to keep him out, so he was assigned as a stretcher-bearer. During the raid, he helped carry 30 wounded soldiers to safety under fire and provided them with morphine. While retreating from the beach, he disembarked and surrendered himself as he considered a POW camp needed religious guidance more than a hunch of soldiers returning to base. After three years’ imprisonment with one serious escape attempt, Foote was released. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.
24. Werner Forssmann was the first man to perform cardiac catheterization. He ignored his department chief and persuaded the operating room nurse to assist him. She agreed, but on the promise that he would do it on her rather than on himself. He pretended to locally anesthetize and cut her arm whilst he actually did the procedure on himself. He then walked downstairs to the radiology department to take the x-ray to prove he would not die. He was fired, became a Nazi and then won the Nobel Prize.
25. In 1961, about 150 Irish soldiers defended a Congo town from 3000 African tribesmen and foreign mercenaries for six days. They killed 300 of them and didn’t lose any men themselves.