History is filled with extraordinary people who faced impossible odds and did the unthinkable through courage, determination, and sheer grit. These incredible true stories highlight more remarkable warriors, explorers, rescuers, and everyday heroes whose actions earned them a place among history’s greatest badasses.
Boxing Survival in Auschwitz
1. A Jewish boxer named Salamo Arouch was held in Auschwitz. He was made to fight other prisoners. Those who lost were sent to the gas chambers or shot. He lived through more than 2 years and 200 bouts, and was eventually freed when the camp was liberated.
2. Ben L. Salomon was drafted as an army dentist during World War II. He later became a regimental surgeon. While serving in the Pacific theater, four Japanese soldiers rushed his tank and killed the soldier he was treating. Furious, Salomon shot two of them, kicked a knife from another man’s hands, and headbutted the last. He picked up a machine gun and began cutting down enemy troops. The next day, he was found dead after being shot 70 times, with nearly 100 enemy soldiers lying dead in front of him.
3. In World War I, French ace Charles Nungesser achieved 45 victories. A German aircraft once invited him to a duel the following day. When he showed up the next day, six German fighter planes were waiting for him. He shot down two of them before heading back home. By war’s end, he had a skull fracture, brain concussion, broken upper and lower jaws, shrapnel lodged in his right arm, dislocated knees, clavicle, wrist, and ankle, a gunshot wound in his mouth and ear, an atrophied tendon in his left leg and calf, lost teeth, and many contusions.
4. During the Vietnam War, when Sergeant Bennie Adkins’s camp came under intense enemy fire, he operated a mortar position for two days without sleeping. He was wounded 18 times in different parts of his body, avoided the NVA for 48 hours through Vietnam’s thick jungles, survived an encounter with a man-eating tiger, evaded NVA patrols, and somehow returned to a place where he could reach rescue and get out alive. He is personally credited with killing 145 enemy soldiers in his 86-hour battle.
5. In 1805, the French had difficulty taking a bridge that the Austrians had orders to destroy if attacked. French marshals Lannes and Murat walked casually up to the bridge guards, laughing off any attempts to stop them and saying the fighting was finished. When an Austrian sergeant tried to blow up the bridge, Lannes threatened to arrest him for attempting to damage public property. He then sat on the cannon barrel to keep them from firing it. When someone said this was a trick, Murat asked whether the officers were going to let him speak to them that way, and the officers then ordered the man imprisoned. They successfully captured the bridge.
6. During World War II, Lieutenant George Albert Cairns, who was part of a British Special Force, was assigned to build landing strips in a jungle in Burma. Once construction started, they came under intense enemy fire and were told to simply kill the enemy. Much of the battle was fought hand to hand, with the British using bayonets and the Japanese using katanas. A Japanese soldier cut off Cairns’ left arm. Even so, Cairns managed to kill that soldier, took the katana with his right arm, and charged at the enemy while swinging it. He killed and wounded several Japanese soldiers before collapsing and dying from blood loss.
7. When Chinese general Zhuge Liang had to defend a town against 150,000 troops with only 100 men, he ordered his men to hide, opened the gates wide, and sat on the walls playing the lute. The opposing general, convinced it was a trap, ordered a retreat.
8. When Private 1st Class Edward H. Ahrens in World War II was discovered holding a sword and surrounded by 13 dead Japanese soldiers, his final words were, “I guess they didn’t know I was a marine.”
9. In 1883, a bear and Frank Devereaux were found dead next to one another, with the ground around them torn up across 20 square feet. It is that the man and bear fought to the death.
10. There was an actual team of Jewish assassins known as “The Avengers” who pursued and carried out executions of Nazi war criminals after World War II.
A Patriot Across Wars
11. Samuel Whittemore was a devoted American patriot who willingly fought for liberty against the British in the Revolutionary War at age 78. Before that, he served as a private in King George’s War and helped capture Fort Louisburg in 1745. Some think he also served in the French and Indian War at age 64. By the time many people are retired, he was fighting in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. He also killed three British soldiers by himself in his fields with a rifle and his dueling pistols. Because of his actions, he was shot in the face, bayonetted, and left for dead. He would not die, and in fact fully recovered and lived to be 98.
12. In the Korean War, American soldier Eduardo C. Gomez destroyed an enemy tank by crawling across an open rice field, climbing onto the tank, prying open the hatch, and dropping a live grenade inside, killing the crew. Although he was wounded as he withdrew from the tank, Gomez declined medical treatment and instead stayed at his post, firing on the enemy until his company established a defensive perimeter.
13. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck served as a general in the Imperial German Army and, in some battles, even when his forces were outnumbered by as much as 20 to 1, he kept the British pinned down in East Africa for 4 years. After the war he became a national hero, and in 1935, when he was offered the ambassadorship to Great Britain, he reportedly told Hitler to go fuck himself.
14. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, British sniper Matt Hughes killed an enemy with a half-mile sniper shot in which the bullet arced 56 feet, or 17 meters, through the air before striking the target. He aimed 56 feet to the left and 38 feet above the target.
15. Thomas Alfred “Todger” Jones served in the British army during World War II. After his unit captured a French village and was digging trenches, sniper fire killed one soldier. Angry at this, he left his trench and crossed no man’s land without cover fire. One bullet passed through his helmet and another through his coat, but he returned fire and killed the sniper. He then saw two Germans firing at him while also waving a white flag. Jones shot both of them. He reached the enemy trench and, on his own, disarmed 102 Germans.
16. In 1996, Bear Grylls broke his back after a 16,000 foot fall when his parachute tore. Two years later, he reached the top of Mt. Everest. He has also eaten raw frozen yak eyeballs, camel intestine juice, raw goat testicles, a live snake, maggots as large as a hand, throbbing with yellow pus, and a huge live spider for his show.
17. In the Vietnam War, Michael Fitzmaurice took the force of a grenade in his flak vest to shield his comrades. After a second grenade blast damaged his rifle, he got another one from an enemy soldier after killing him with his bare hands. Despite severe injuries and partial blindness, he kept fighting and refused medical evacuation. He lived and was later given the Medal of Honor.
18. Agustina of Aragon was on her way to a fort with apples for Spanish soldiers during the Spanish War of Independence when she saw them retreating from a French attack. She rushed ahead and operated the cannons, shaming the soldiers so deeply that they had to return to the battle. With her help, they forced the French to retreat. She was later captured, but escaped and became the leader of a guerrilla band. She also acted as a battery commander in the Battle of Victoria. She was known as the Spanish Joan of Arc.
19. In 2008, British Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher threw himself backward onto a grenade to protect his comrades. Although the blast hurled him into the air, his rucksack took the force of the explosion and he got away with only a nosebleed and a headache.
20. At the 1968 Olympics, Kip Keino arrived late for the 1500 meter final because he was caught in traffic. He ran 2 miles to reach the event in time, and still won the gold medal. He was also dealing with gallstones then.
Boy Stops Deadly Bomber
21. In January 2014, Aitzaz Hasan, a 15-year-old boy in Pakistan, died after courageously facing a suicide bomber who was heading toward his school, causing the bomb to go off early. His actions saved hundreds of students.
22. In 2012, Venus Green, a 90-year-old woman from Baltimore, locked a police officer in her basement after he attempted to search her home without a warrant. She filed suit and received a $95,000 settlement.
23. During the Vietnam War, American sniper Carlos Hathcock volunteered to crawl for three days across 2,000 meters of open ground to reach an enemy headquarters. He developed bed sores from staying still for so long and could only move when the wind shifted the grass around him. Enemy patrols got so close that they stepped on his knuckles and stopped to smoke just feet away. He fired one shot that killed an NVA general, then had to retrace the same route while patrols swarmed the area searching for a sniper. He could move only inches at a time and returned without being seen.
24. During World War II, the Gestapo’s most wanted fugitive was New Zealand-born Allied agent Nancy Wake, who received France’s Legion of Honour. She once commanded 7,000 men against the Nazis. Among her many feats, she killed an SS soldier with her bare hands to stop him from sounding the alarm during a covert raid, and she also rescued hundreds of Allied parachuters inside enemy territory. She was the most decorated woman of the Second World War.
25. Edward Loder is the most decorated man in Boston Fire Department history. After his first ten years of service, he was placed with Rescue One because he had a reputation for toughness. In 1990, he saved a mentally unstable woman from leaping from her 16th-floor hotel room by rappelling from the roof on a guideline and tackling her away from the ledge just as she was about to jump. In 1993, he caught a mental patient with one hand immediately after the man jumped and had to cling to the rescue ladder with his other hand. He then had to keep holding the jumper until the ladder was lowered.
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