Kitchen Knife Emergency Delivery
26. In 2000, a Mexican woman named Ines Ramirez Perez successfully carried out a C-section on herself after 12 hours of nonstop pain. Even though she had no medical training, she used a kitchen knife and three glasses of hard liquor while her husband was drinking at a bar. After an hour of operating on herself, she reached into her uterus and pulled out her baby boy. She then cut the umbilical cord with scissors and lost consciousness. Once she regained consciousness, she used clothes to bind her wound and sent one of her older sons to get help. She was eventually taken to a clinic, and both she and her baby boy survived.
27. Actor Sean Bean was once punched in the eye and stabbed in the arm with broken glass at a bar while defending a former Playboy Model. He declined an ambulance and then ordered another drink.
28. Erwin Rommel was a highly decorated German officer who, during World War 2, treated captured soldiers humanely, ignored orders to kill Jews and civilians, and even took part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He found himself behind Allied lines several times. On one occasion, he came across an Allied field hospital. They were short on supplies, and he promised to bring medical supplies, after which he drove away unhindered. Later, he returned with the promised medical supplies. After Rommel’s death, soldiers on both sides paid their respects at his grave, and he is the only member of the Third Reich to have a museum dedicated to him.
29. In 1959, pilot Lt. Colonel William Rankin ejected from his plane straight into a violent thundercloud. The storm’s winds kept him suspended for 40 minutes, hitting him with hailstones and with so much rain that at times he had to hold his breath to avoid drowning in midair.
30. During World War 1, Dominic “Fats” McCarthy received the Victoria Cross after he, almost entirely on his own, killed 22 Germans, captured 5 machine guns, took 50 prisoners, and seized half a kilometer of the German front. When it was over, even the prisoners he had taken patted him on the back for what he had done.
31. In 2012, 90-year-old Jay Leone of Greenbrae, California was shot in the head by a burglar. He survived, then said, “Fu*k you, you son of a b*tch. Now it’s my turn,” and shot the burglar three times in the abdomen.
32. In 1823, American fur trapper Hugh Glass was attacked by a grizzly bear while exploring the Upper Missouri River. After the bear knocked him to the ground, he stood up and kept stabbing it with his knife until it died. He was abandoned 200 miles from the nearest settlement with a broken leg, cuts that exposed his bare ribs, and infected wounds. After regaining consciousness, he set his leg, used maggots to consume his dead flesh, and crawled back to civilization over the course of 6 weeks. He lived on roots and berries, and even drove wolves away from a bison carcass. When he got home, he retrieved his rifle and kept working as a trapper.
33. During the 1912 Thule Expedition, Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen was buried deep beneath snow after a snowstorm. With no spears or daggers available, he made a dagger from his own feces and used it to free himself. On another expedition in 1926, frostbite caused gangrene in his toes, and before it worsened, he cut off his own toes with a hammer without anesthesia and replaced his leg with a peg.
34. Erich Hartmann was a German fighter pilot in World War 2. Between 1940 and 1945, he fought in 824 air battles and shot down 352 Allied aircraft without ever being shot down himself. Soviet pilots called him Cherniy Chort, or Black Devil, because of the black tulip pattern on his aircraft. Later in the war, Soviet pilots often withdrew when they saw his plane, so his aircraft was assigned to novice pilots. The Soviet airmen’s unwillingness to engage caused Hartmann’s kill rate to decline.
35. In 1951 during the Korean War, the American F Company was attacked by a huge Korean force, so everyone retreated except a machine gunner named Jack G. Hanson, who stayed behind to cover their withdrawal. Hours later, when Americans recaptured the position, they found Hanson dead in front of his machine gun nest with all of his ammunition used up. He had an empty pistol in his right hand and a blood-covered machete in his left. About 22 dead enemy soldiers lay before him, riddled with bullet wounds and stab wounds.
Teen Hero Fights Through
36. After illegally enlisting in the Marines at 14, Jacklyn Lucas later boarded a ship headed for Iwo Jima in secret, charged ashore without a rifle, and threw himself onto two grenades to shield his squad. He lived and received the Medal of Honor at 17. From 1961 to 1965, he also worked as a paratrooper to overcome his fear of heights. He once survived a training jump even though both parachutes failed to open. He dropped 3,500 feet and was unharmed.
37. In the 1947 India-Pakistan war, India’s Major Piru Singh was ordered to lead his men along a narrow mountain ridge to retake an Indian post. Singh took up his submachine gun and rushed up the ridge, shouting loudly. They were hit by machine-gun fire and grenades. When he reached the top, he had no ammunition left, all his men were dead, and explosions had torn away most of his clothing. In a furious state, he threw grenades into a trench and bayoneted the men inside, then an enemy grenade ripped off half his face. Bleeding and blind in one eye, he tossed another grenade at the second enemy trench, and a bullet to the head killed him, but his grenade destroyed the final enemy position and completed his mission.
38. While Sean Connery was shooting a love scene in the 1958 film Another Time, Another Place, the gangster boyfriend of his co-star became jealous and drew a gun on him. Connery seized the weapon from his hand and twisted his wrist until he fled the set.
39. When a Rocky Mountain grizzly attacked hunting guide C. Dale Petersen, he killed it using only his hands and teeth. Petersen forced his right hand into the bear’s throat and used his teeth and jaws to clamp shut the bear’s jugular vein. After the bear lost consciousness from the lack of blood flow to the brain, he struck it on the head with a stick.
40. Mikhail Panikakha was a Russian Marine who volunteered during the Battle of Stalingrad. When the Soviets had been cut down to only hundreds, German tanks drove over Soviet trenches to crush them and bury the soldiers inside. With no antitank grenades left, Panikakha lit a Molotov cocktail, and a bullet hit the bottle, setting him on fire. Even while burning, he picked up another Molotov, climbed onto the tank, and smashed the bottle against the engine compartment. The tank and Panikakha exploded almost at once. The Germans, seeing this, withdrew.
41. In 2012, a 56-year-old Russian grandmother named Aishat Maksudova fought a wolf with her bare hands and killed it using an ax. She said, “So the wolf was just clawing into my left hand, pulling on it, pulling away like this and then I took the ax and hit him on his head.”
42. In 2012, Anthony Omari was slashed in the face with a machete while protecting an underfunded Kenyan orphanage run by his family from robbers who attacked it. He saved 37 orphans that day. The assault was retaliation for an earlier failed robbery after Anthony threw a hammer at one of the thieves.
43. In 2014, a woman in Northern India, armed only with simple farm implements, managed to drive off and kill a leopard that leaped on her while she was carrying water. Kamla Devi, 56, said she fought the animal for more than half an hour with a sickle.
44. In 2001, when Florida man Vance Flosenzier saw a 7-foot shark holding his 8-year-old nephew Jesse Arbogast by the arm, he seized the shark and wrestled it barehanded out of the water while others pulled Jesse to shore. He grappled with the shark for more than 10 minutes to keep it away from other children. Afterward, they killed the shark and opened it to recover Jesse’s severed arm, which surgeons were able to put back on.
45. Major Dick Bong is the United States’ top air ace, having downed at least 40 planes during World War 2. He actually struck another plane, resulting in a “probable” victory. In 1945, he became a Lockheed test pilot and died in a P-80 fighter jet crash on the same day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Marines Rise Against Odds
46. A man named Chesty Puller enlisted in the U.S. Marines as a private, was promoted to sergeant, then became a lieutenant officer, was later discharged, joined again as a private, became an officer once more, and ultimately reached the rank of lieutenant general. He is the only Marine ever to receive five Navy Crosses. In the Korean War, while in a difficult situation, he said, “They’re on our right, they’re on our left, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us; they can’t get away from us this time.” He and his men made it through the ordeal.
47. Italian adventurer Reinhold Messner climbed Mount Everest without oxygen. He also ascended Nanga Parbat, which is over 8000 meters high, three times. On his first climb, he lost his brother and seven toes. He returned to climb it a second time as the first person to do it solo, and a third time to recover his brother’s remains.
48. In 2003, female A-10 Thunderbolt pilot Kim Campbell was heavily hit by anti-aircraft fire while flying over Baghdad. The aircraft lost all hydraulic power, rolled left, and nose-dived, but after switching to manual mode, she regained control, flew for an hour, and landed without brakes.
49. In 2008, Florida wildlife officers tranquilized a 375-pound bear after it wandered into a neighborhood. The frightened bear ran toward the ocean and began to drown. At that point, a man named Adam Warwick jumped into the water to save it. He held the bear by the neck and carried it back to shore. The bear tried a few times to lunge at Adam and climb onto him to keep itself afloat. Adam got the bear ashore and was left with only minor cuts and scrapes.
50. In 2013, when 80-year-old Russian villager Yusuf Alchagirov came face to face with a bear, he decided to fight it. He slammed his head into the bear’s face and then repeatedly kicked it in the testicles. Then, after the angry bear threw him over a cliff, he fell dozens of feet, hit the rock below, and lost consciousness, but survived to tell the story.
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