Unforgettable Legends: History’s 40 Most Awesome Badasses – Part 4

A girl named Miki Endo sacrificed her life in the2011 Tohono tsunami in Japan to warn people of the oncoming tsunami on the Emergency Broadcast System and saved thousands of lives. She did not leave her spot and kept broadcasting until she was swept away.

In 1975, a decorated Marine named Oliver Sipple saved President Gerald Ford from assassination when he noticed as a bystander that a woman next to him had drawn and leveled a pistol at Ford. His life was then ruined when the media outed him as gay.

In 2006, a 22-year-old Skydiver named Robert Cook saved his student’s life by acting as a human shield. Knowing that the plane was in free fall, he calmed the girl by talking to her, wrapped his arms around her and supported her head, before twisting his body mid-crash so that he took the force of the impact. She survived, but everyone else on the plane died.

Julie d’Aubigny was a 17th-century French noble opera singer and very good swordswoman who beat men in duels. She once got challenged to duels by three separate men for kissing a woman at a ball. She also once rescued her lesbian lover from a convent by burning it down. She was pardoned by the king.

Daniel “Chappie” James Jr., the first African American to reach the rank of four-star general, hand an Old West-style standoff with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who complied and pulled back after James demanded him to move his hand away from his gun.

In 1976, a Japanese ultranationalist porn actor named Mitsuyasu Maeno died after flying a plane into the house of a yakuza don to punish him for accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Lockheed and betraying the samurai code.

In 2006, a soldier named Ross A. McGinnis was manning the gunner's hatch of his unit's Humvee when an insurgent threw a grenade inside. Instead of leaping to safety, McGinnis shouted a warning, jumped inside and threw himself on the grenade. He was killed instantly, saving his team. He was 19.

In 2006, a man having a seizure on New York subway tracks was rescued by a stranger named Wesley Autrey who was taking his two daughters home before work. He jumped down onto the man and compressed him down by laying on him as five cars passed over him.

Sean Connery once fought and won against six gang members after they tried to mug him. The gang gave him great respect after the defeat and Connery became known as a “hard man.”

An identity thief named Ferdinand Demara once stole the identity of a surgeon and while aboard a Navy destroyer was tasked with performing several life-saving surgeries. He proceeded to memorize a medical textbook just beforehand and all his patients survived.