Some people refuse to quit, no matter how impossible the odds seem. From fearless soldiers and daring rescuers to extraordinary survivors and everyday heroes, these incredible stories prove that courage, resilience, and determination can appear in the most unexpected moments.
Caesar Outsmarts His Captors
1. Pirates seized Julius Caesar when he was 22. His charm made them treat him like a companion. He told them to raise his ransom to twice the amount, and they did. He warned that he would crucify them once he was freed, and they dismissed it as a joke. After his release, he assembled a fleet, came back, and crucified them.
2. Fazal Din was a 24-year-old Indian allied sergeant in World War 2, fighting the Japanese in Burma when his unit was attacked by six Japanese soldiers carrying swords. One of them drove his sword through Fazal’s chest and out through his back. When the soldier pulled it out, thinking Fazal had died, Fazal Din grabbed the sword from the Japanese officer and killed him with it. He then killed two more Japanese soldiers with it. After that, he made his way back to Allied lines, properly submitted an after-action report to his superior officer, and then immediately collapsed and died.
3. During the 1960s, Soviet doctor Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov had to take out his own appendix after it ruptured because he was the only doctor at a remote Antarctic base, leaving no chance for evacuation. The surgery took one hour and 45 minutes, and he survived to recount it.
4. In 2014, 24-year-old New Zealander James Grant was spearfishing with friends when he was attacked by what he thought was a sevengill shark. He fought it off by stabbing it several times with his knife. After getting to shore, he noticed bite wounds as long as 5 cm. He closed the wounds on himself with a first aid kit, then went with his friends to a nearby pub and enjoyed a pint of beer.
5. On September 11, 2001, NYPD Officer John Perry went to headquarters to submit his retirement papers. After hearing the explosion at the World Trade Center, he responded at once and was later killed when one of the towers fell. He was the only off-duty officer killed on 9/11.
6. Hideaki Akaiwa, a Japanese man, survived the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, then put on scuba equipment to rescue his wife from their flooded home. After saving her, he went to his mother’s house, repeated the same act, and rescued her too.
7. Aki Ra, a former Cambodian child soldier conscripted by the Khmer Rouge, has devoted his life to clearing landmines in Cambodia after the Cambodian Civil War. Using little more than a stick and a knife, he has personally removed and cleared more than 50,000 landmines over 20 years.
8. In 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived through the atomic explosion in Hiroshima. He crawled to an air raid shelter and stayed there overnight. The next morning, he boarded a train to reach his job in Nagasaki on time, where he survived a second atomic blast. He later had two daughters and lived to age 93.
9. Violette Morris, a Frenchwoman, won more than 20 national athletic championships in France, from boxing to shot put, collected over 50 medals in national and international events, played in more than 200 professional soccer games, and finished first in nearly two dozen long distance auto and motorcycle races. She also chose to have a mastectomy so she could fit better inside her race cars. After joining the Gestapo, she was banned for life from French sports. She frightened the French Resistance. She became such a serious problem for the Allies that British Commandos and the French Resistance arranged a special mission to eliminate her by ambushing her and firing a dozen machine guns at her sports car.
10. In 2002, Keith Lovegrove saw his car being stolen, so he jumped over a fence and ran after it. He sprang into the air and held onto the vehicle’s bumper, where he was dragged for more than 20 meters. He opened the trunk and, when the car hit a speed bump, used the momentum to somersault into the trunk. He broke through the back seat and then grabbed the thief in a headlock, pulling him out of the car. The thief then punched him in the face and got away. At the time, Keith was a 54 year old former soldier and was officially registered as disabled.
Heroic Dive For Children
11. In 1981, NFL running back Joe Delaney, who could not swim, died while trying to rescue three children from drowning. Delaney told a bystander, “I’ve got to save those kids. If I don’t come up, get somebody,” before jumping into the water.
12. CNN medical correspondent and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta saved a Marine’s life after he was shot in the head during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq. Without proper tools, Gupta carried out the brain surgery with a Black and Decker handheld drill. The Marine survived.
13. During the 2011 Japanese earthquake, 50 workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant stayed behind even though 750 others had been evacuated. For four days they prevented the reactor from melting down until backup arrived, saving countless lives.
14. US Park Ranger Roy Sullivan holds the record for the most lightning strikes survived. He was hit by lightning 7 times during his lifetime. He was struck once while driving a truck, once inside a ranger station, on two separate occasions after running or driving away from the storm, and immediately after the seventh strike he had to fend off a trout-stealing bear with a tree branch. He said that this was the 22nd time he had struck a bear with a stick in his life.
15. New Zealand rugby player Buck Shelford lost 4 teeth to punches and took a cleat to the testicles during a game in 1986. This tore open his scrotum, leaving his testicles hanging. He had them stitched up on the bench and kept playing, then won the match.
16. James Doohan, the actor who portrayed Scotty in Star Trek, served in the Canadian Army during World War 2. He first experienced combat at Juno Beach. He killed two snipers, guided his men through a minefield, and was later wounded by friendly fire from six machine-gun rounds. One round to the chest was stopped by his cigarette case; another cut off his right middle finger; and four struck his leg. After he recovered, he worked as an air observation pilot and once flew a light observation plane between telegraph poles on a mountainside simply to show it could be done.
17. After helping secure Ivory Coast’s spot in the 2006 Football World Cup, star striker and national icon Didier Drogba urged Ivory Coast’s combatants to lay down their weapons, leading to a cease-fire after five years of civil war in Ivory Coast. He also gave $3 million from his Pepsi signing bonus to help build a hospital in his hometown.
18. In 2011, three robbers broke into Lance Corporal Wayne O’Mahoney’s house, and he woke up and wrestled with two of them, who later ran away. He then prevented the third, who had a knife, from stealing his new car by smashing the car window with a metal crowbar. The frightened robber escaped through the passenger door. That was when Wayne O’Mahoney realized he had no clothes on.
19. In 1944, Canadian soldier Leo Major captured 93 Nazi soldiers in the Netherlands by himself. In 1945, he again acted alone to free the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands, which had a population of 50,000, from the occupation of several hundred German soldiers. He killed several Nazis and ran through the streets firing a machine gun and throwing grenades. The Germans panicked and fled, believing a large Canadian force was attacking them. At the time, he was blind in one eye from a grenade wound he had received in 1941.
20. In 2013, Bosnian shepherd Blazo Grkovic was attacked by a bear while he was looking after a baby goat. Unable to reach the small hand ax he carried, he defended himself by seizing the bear’s throat and strangling it to death. He then walked more than a mile across rough mountainous ground before he could reach an ambulance and receive treatment for several bruises and cuts.
Master Fraudster’s Many Faces
21. Natwarlal was a well-known Indian conman famous for repeatedly selling the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the President’s residence, and the Parliament House of India, together with its 545 sitting members, including the then Indian Prime Minister. He used over 50 aliases, excelled at disguise, came up with inventive ways to cheat, and was highly skilled at forging the signatures of famous people. He was arrested many times, but in 1996 the wheelchair-bound octogenarian disappeared while being taken from prison to a hospital for treatment.
22. The first person to receive the Victoria Cross was 20-year-old ship’s mate Charles Davis Lucas, who during the Battle of Bomarsund in 1854 picked up a live shell that had landed on the deck and threw it overboard. It exploded with a huge roar before reaching the water. Lucas’s action meant that no one aboard was killed or badly wounded by the shell. He was promoted immediately, eventually reached the rank of Rear Admiral, and married the captain’s daughter.
23. In World War 2, Polish poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec was held in a German concentration camp, where he made several attempts to break out. He was sentenced to death for his second escape attempt but managed to get away in 1943 after killing his guard with a shovel when he was ordered to dig his own grave. He escaped wearing the guard’s uniform.
24. In World War 2, Medal of Honor recipient Thomas Baker told his squad to leave him leaning against a tree with a pistol and eight bullets after he was wounded. Later, American forces discovered the dead Baker in the same place, holding an empty pistol, with eight dead Japanese soldiers lying nearby.
25. Don Ritchie was an Australian who lived across from Australia’s most famous suicide location. By 2009, over a 45-year span, he had officially saved 160 people from suicide, although his family says the real figure is closer to 500. He used to start conversations with people thinking about suicide and would invite them to his home for tea. He died in 2012 at the age of 85.
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