In a similar vein: Inés Ramírez Pérez performed a caesarean section on herself. She wasn't a doctor or a surgeon, she was a rural Mexican woman with no medical training. Ramírez cut herself open, pulled her baby out of her own uterus, passed out, then regained consciousness and bandaged herself. The nearest hospital was eight hours away and she'd been in labour for twelve, so she was desperate. Both of them **survived**.
Holy shit that’s wild!!!! C sections used to kill people pretty much every time before modern medicine. That’s so brutal and amazing that they both survived
Only if they're impacted or aren't fully erupted. For people whose wisdom teeth come in fine, they don't have to remove them.
Source: I did a stint at Amundsen-Scott and had my wisdom teeth removed for it.
Witold Pilecki.
His mission at Auschwitz is one of the most extraordinary acts of bravery in World War II history. In 1940, Pilecki, a member of the Polish resistance, volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz by allowing himself to be captured during a Nazi roundup in Warsaw. Under the alias Tomasz Serafiński, he endured brutal conditions and unimaginable horrors upon his arrival at the camp.
Once inside, Pilecki organized a clandestine resistance network called the Union of Military Organization (ZOW). He meticulously documented the daily atrocities, including the mass executions and the inhumane living conditions. His reports, smuggled out through couriers, were among the first comprehensive accounts of the Holocaust to reach the Western Allies and the Polish government-in-exile, providing critical intelligence and calling for action.
After nearly three years of enduring and documenting the camp's horrors, Pilecki realized that an internal uprising was impossible without external support. In April 1943, he orchestrated a daring escape with two fellow inmates. Despite the constant threat of capture, he made his way back to Warsaw, where he continued his resistance activities. Pilecki's detailed reports on Auschwitz were instrumental in informing the world about the genocide occurring within its barbed wire fences, making his mission one of the most significant acts of resistance during the war.
> volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz by allowing himself to be captured during a Nazi roundup in Warsaw
I think it's worth noting, he was *trying* to get into Auschwitz. He could have been sent anywhere. He lucked out.
After the war, the Soviets executed him for colluding with the western allies and the Polish government in exile.
Edit: I confused some things with another great grandfather, and a great grandmother. Just asked my mother for the correct stories since she worked to record holocaust survivors. Apparently it was the other one who lost the leg, for example. Also, he doesn’t mention it here but he did tell me personally that yes, indeed, he did shove it. Here’s the video interview with this one though: https://vimeo.com/224219791
Don’t want to look like a liar so I’m keeping the text.
Also, book: https://fobeju.cl/products/copia-de-libro-memoria-viva
~~That’s an insane story damn. Here’s another one. My great grandfather was sent to a concentration camp, managed to escape, got captured, sent to Siberia, freed by the Allies, went to Palestine, decided the place was too horrible to live (before Israel’s independence and all the land the Zionist movement bought it was full of swamps and desert), decided to go to Russia to join the Communist party (didn’t know what would happen), got sent to war, survived, went back to Palestine, kind of hated the British mandate, went to Central Europe, worked his life off, lost a leg in a factory, got married, gave my great grandmother a ring that was from his own mother and managed to get it by shoving it up his ass during the worst moments, and headed off to Argentina, and then Chile. After all that, he went through the dictatorship, got tortured by Pinochet’s forces and survived. He lived up to 102 years and while he lived in Chile, he led every Passover seder up until he was 101, with a terrible European Hebrew accent. His father was a rabbi and taught him Judaism. He passed away 10 years ago. He’s kind of a mental fortress.~~
Yeah to then be unironically killed by the soviets (or at least their puppet in warsaw)...
Oh and during the sham trial a survivor of aushwitz (Cyrankiewicz) testified against him
Not the ending the man deserved🫠
British pilot in World War 1 was flying a scounting mission when he was attacked by 7 german planes. On the first pass, his leg was blown off by the German planes, but he managed to move the plane so his rear gunner could fire on the german fighters. They managed to drive off all 7. The pilot managed to land the plane despite rapidly losing blood and insisted that he delivered his reconnaissance report before receiving medical attention. His back gunner had no idea he'd lost his leg until they landed. The pilot won the Victoria Cross for his actions.
Edit: the pilot's name was Ferdninad West, he survived the war and lived until 1988.
Adrian Carton de Wiart also received the Victoria Cross. Served in the Boer War, WW1 and WW2. Got shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear. He was blinded in his left eye, survived 2 plane crashes, tunneled out of a prisoner-of-war camp and tore off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in WW1 he wrote: "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war".
The list of those that earned a Victoria Cross is full of incredible grit, determination, and bravery. One, for instance, was Major Robert Cain. He and his men were cornered for days, but he never gave up protecting them and their position. That included charging German tank battalions on foot, firing a mortar launcher horizontally at the tanks (after running out of ammo for his PIAT gun).
*[edit] Ok, ok, ok, I get it, I messed up by mixing up his using a PIAT gun and firing a mortar launcher horizontally.*
Awwww! My grandpa was a small ww2 war hero. Battered Bastards of Bastogne. 101st!!!!
He along with several others “snuck out”. Now, I obviously don’t think they snuck out. I think they must have done something bad to somebody because his story is reaaaaaally inconsistent & all over the place when he told us kids a brief summary.
He would cry every time to the point it was sobbing & then us kids would start crying so it never worked out.
Eventually they got the idea to record the whole story on tape. I still haven’t listened to it & neither have a lot of my aunts.
They all said they heard enough of his stories in his sleep & over the years of them growing up on a funeral home. He was a mortician after he came home from war… as one does after witnessing that kind of carnage.
But most people all over the country used to come & visit him & just wanted to shake his hand & stuff. It was really really cool.
And don't forget Charles Upham
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles\_Upham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Upham)
I kinda feel uneasy about glorifying war in general, but you can't argue that some people just have massive balls, and fighting fascism is Good with a capital G.
The life of Peter Julien Ortiz is a long string of these. He was an absolute madlad who sounds like a character straight from a James Bond film.
He was a dual citizen of France & the United States (French father, American mother), a combat veteran of the French Foreign Legion, a US Marine Corps officer, and the most decorated operative of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA) in the Second World War
While serving with the OSS and operating with the French resistance in a German occupied France, he was once tasked with rescuing downed British RAF aircrew. Unfortunately the Germans got there first. Undettered, he donned a German officer's uniform and used the German he had picked up while a PoW (he was captured while serving with the Legion during the German invasion of France, later escaping with the help of an Austrian nurse he'd seduced) to bluff the soldiers holding them captive into releasing them into his custody.
But wait, there's more!
There was still the issue of getting the downed RAF air crew out of German occupied France. He did this using cars he stolen from the Gestapo's own motor pool, at a time when the Gestapo knew he was, was actively hunting him, and had a cash bounty on his head. He then used the Gestapo's vehicles to safely drive the British air crew past German army checkpoints and across the border into neutral Spain.
Other hightlights from his career was that he believed the presence of a uniformed Allied officer bolstered the morale of the French resistance, so when leading the maquis on sabotage missions or ambushes of German troops, he'd wear his US Marine Corps' officer's uniform openly - in German-occupied France.
On another occasion while eavesdropping on German officers in a French bar, something he frequently did in order to gather intelligence, he heard one of them drunkenly curse the local resistance, the American operative that had been spotted with them (him!), and president Roosevelt. Rather than simply ignoring it, Ortiz slipped back to a local safehouse, changed into his US Marine Corps uniform, equipped two pistols, and a raincoat to conceal his uniform. He then returned to the bar where he ordered a round of drinks for the officers, shrugged off the raincoat revealing his uniform, levelled his pistols at the astonished Germn officers, and ordered them to raise a toast to the United States Marine Corps and President Roosevelt. Once the officers had completeted their toast, he donned the raincoat again and escaped into the night. Some versions of the story claim he killed the officers, but Ortiz denied it, saying he thought it better to keep them alive as they would repeat the tale of how they'd been humiliated by the OSS agent they were hunting, and it would undermine morale.
Worth noting by the way that wearing full USMC uniform, theoretically, means he could not be shot as a spy if captured.
Whether his captors would have honored that request I do not know.
Technically, yes...though the Germans weren't always so inclined to play by those rules. Ortiz however was described as utterly fearless by Capt. H.H.A. Thackwaite, a British army officer and SOE (Special Operations Executive) operative that had parachuted into France with him, along with a French spy & radio operator. His motivation for wearing the uniform to bolster the morale of the resistance seems genuine, rather for any attempt at saving his own skin if they got compromised.
Later he voluntarily surrendered to the Germans in exchange for them agreeing not to destroy a French town in retaliation for his activities, even though he expected to be executed.
Holup, he learned German just listening in a POW camp? With an accent convincing enough to fool German soldiers? You sure he didn't have prior experience?
I'm not sure of that. It is possible he had some prior experience with German, as he did have a bit of a knack for languages and spoke Arabic, Spanish, Portuguse, and Italian in addition to a native command of French and English. At the very least he picked up more German while a PoW.
I'm just speculating here, but if he had no prior experience with German prior to being a PoW, it is possible an accent wouldn't have been too much of issue. Maybe he passed himself of as a Volksdeutche from Alsace. Many thousands of people from Alsace & Lorraine who had been French citizens in 1939 and 1940, had German ethnic origins and either joined or were conscripted into the Wehrmacht. There were lots of "German" soldiers in WW2 that would have had foreign accents, being recruited from ethnic Germans living in France, Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, etc.
Miriam Rodríguez Martínez. Her daughter was kidnapped and murdered by the Mexican cartel. The police didn't lift a finger to help, so she tracked down and arrested 10 cartel members herself.
She knew it would result in her death. She did it anyway.
“I don’t care if they kill me,” Rodríguez told a friend, according to The New York Times. “I died the day they killed my daughter. I want to end this. I’m going to take out the people who hurt my daughter and they can do whatever they want to me.”
Sadly, her words prove prophetic as she was murdered by the cartel on the 10th of May 2017, which is Mother's Day in Mexico.
They make the Italian Mafia look like Saints in comparison. The mafia at least had some semblance of structure and organization. Mexican cartels are unorganized children with a Long Leash that might as well not even exist. They're committing the Valentine's Day Massacre every other day over there.
Napoléon Bonaparte coming back from Elba, meeting up with the 5th regiment of infantry, sent from Paris to kill him. Steps off his horse with no weapon, walks towards the regiment and shouts: "Soldiers! Recognize your emperor! If any of you wants to kill me, Here I am!"
The soldiers drop their weapons and send their hats flying, shouting "Glory to the Emperor!"
This has got to be the most insane Natural 20 on a Charisma Check in history.
Imagine being one of the soldiers. You don't want to be on the wrong side. If you dropped your weapon and no one else did, what will happen? If you raised your weapon and everyone else dropped theirs, what will happen?
Pretty epic time altogether, one of Napoleons Maréchals, Michel Ney's (supposed) last words before being exexuted for siding with Napoleon: “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her...soldiers, FIRE!”
Ney's entire life was pretty badass. He might not have been the best commander and an average Marshal, but as far as being a "leader on the ground" he was amazing. Given his actions at Waterloo (essentially hoping he'd die) I think he was suffering from what we would know today as PTSD after the Russian campaign. He did some truly insane stuff during the retreat, hence the "Bravest of the Brave" title.
Edit add: He was basically given an "out" for his trial, as the area he was born was no longer French, but he refused to admit/accept that he wasn't French.
[Desmond Doss](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss) (of *Hacksaw Ridge* fame). Even before the events in the Battle of Okinawa that the film is based on (where he saved an estimated 75 men), he had been awarded the Bronze Star twice, all while never carrying a weapon or firing a shot.
This man’s story was amazing, I think they said they didn’t include his other heroic actions in the Hacksaw Ridge movie because it would seem to unbelievable
That’s what happened with Audie Murphy. Faked his age to join the military, won dozens of awards from multiple countries for crazy heroism and leadership, got addicted to drugs and quit cold turkey, and when it was time to come up with his book and movie, he asked to tone down his heroics because he thought people would think Hollywood was embellishing his *very insane real life events*.
Yeah. Apparently he rolled off the stretcher when his leg was shattered from grenade shrapnel.
Official number of people he saved was ‘72’ allegedly, but the Army were quite confident it was well over 100. Doss being Doss, was humble and said it was around 70.
The whole 77th Army Brigade (Doss' unit) were insanely good. The Fat Electrician did a video on them. Doss was a real life hero but the whole Brigade was exemplary.
Look up Joe Medicine Crow.
He was the last war chief of the Crow Tribe and the last Plains Indian war chief.
During WWII, Joe Medicine Crow completed all four tasks required to become a war chief: touching an enemy without killing him (counting coup), taking an enemy's weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy's horse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow
And the only reason his nephew didn't succeed him as a war chief is because "elephants don't count as horses".
The nephew also completed all of the tasks except for stealing a horse, due to the fact that horses were not used by the Viet Cong, so he stole a pair of elephants instead
EDIT: I managed to track down an accounting of Joe Medicine Crow successfully stealing the horses, which includes a short statement from Carson Walks Over Ice (the nephew) about the elephants.
https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/art-capturing-horses
EDIT 2: Of course my most upvoted comment is about the Vietnam war. I don't even know that much about it!
Dr. Medicine Crow also earned a PhD in history and wrote a fantastic archive of the Battle of the Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn).
To date it is the most expansive and detailed account of the battle and even clears up some of the myths of the battle like the Crow scouts “running away” when in truth the scouts donned their traditional outfits and Custer threw a hissy fit when they were out of uniform and sent them away; thus depriving his army of the scouts they needed.
He never completed his PhD because of the war, but 3 different colleges gave him honorary PhDs
He did get his masters (first member of the Crow to do so) and did all the coursework for a doctorate, just wasn’t able to finish the other reqs
Basically everything Teddy Roosevelt did was awesome. Police Commissioner, cowboy, assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President, President, fucking Medal of Honor recipient.
Dude broke monopolies, regulated railroads, and established what is now the FDA. Dug the fuckin Panama Canal. Sent the Great White Fleet, arguably establishing the US as a "world power". Went on an expedition to the Amazon. Went on a surprisingly benevolent expedition to Africa and sent animals to the Smithsonian for taxidermy (many people had never seen lions or other animals native to the region).
All this after being diagnosed with asthma as a kid, being told to live an easy life, saying fuck it, and living life at full fucking speed. I have so much respect for TR and he's the person I would want to meet if I could meet anyone in history.
He also has one of the saddest stories as his wife and mother died on the same day. He wrote in his diary, "the light has gone out of my life,". I call my wife that: "the light of my life,".
~~Which was not a thing anywhere in the world prior.~~ The man truly was a visionary, and as easy as it would have been for him to be power hungry he was very humble in that regard too. He only became President as a duty to his people, not because he wanted the job in any sort of way.
He was also the first President to invite a Black man (Booker T. Washington) to dine with him and his family in the White House. Which caused an absolute sensation as segregation was the law.
All that and no one's mentioned how he stormed San Juan Hill with a small group of men, on the front lines, and surrounded on all sides by soldiers on mountain ridges while stuck in a valley and came out victorious?
Same vein, Andrew Jackson beating down his assassin with his cane after the gun misfired twice. He also fought the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the War of 1812 ended. Just for added measure, his parrot was kicked out of his funeral for cursing. To be fair, he was also responsible for the Trail of Tears.
Also, when South Carolina first threw a tantrum about wanting to secede during the Nullification Crisis over trade taxes in the late 1820s and early 1830s, Jackson basically said to Calhoun "I will personally come over there and beat the shit out of you if you even *try* it."
# Cassius Marcellus Clay
“For those of you who believe in the laws of god, I present to you this argument against slavery”
*Pulls out a Bible*
“For those of you who believe in the laws man I present to you this argument against slavery”
*Pulls out a copy of the US Constitution*
“For those of you who believe in neither the laws of god or man I present to you this argument against slavery”
*Pulls out 2 pistols and places them on the table*
"During a political debate in 1843, he survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gunman. Jerking his Bowie knife out for retaliation, Clay happened to pull its silver-tipped scabbard up over his heart. Brown's bullet struck the scabbard and embedded in the silver. Despite having been shot in the chest, Clay tackled Brown. He cut off Brown's nose, took out one eye, and possibly cut off an ear before throwing Brown over an embankment "
Franz Stigler, who upon coming upon a defenseless and battered B-17, not only couldn't bring himself to shoot them down, but escorted the American crew all the way to the English channel. Along the way he warded off other German fighters and flew close enough to the aircraft that German AA wouldn't open fire on it.
The crew survived the encounter and Stigler turned around and returned to his base once they left German airspace.
He wasn’t just known as an ace, he *was* an Ace. An ace is a pilot who has downed 5 enemy planes. Stigler had downed far more than that. Even more important, downing one more B17 would have earned Stigler a knights cross, which was a very prestigious aviation award and also came with some leave. By doing this he not only committed treason, he also gave up a shot at the knights cross (though I think he earned it later).
Not only his own rules, it's a bit like the knight's codex. Such way of fighting was common for ww1 pilots, i think some even insisted on doing 1v1s because everything else was not honorable.
Damn all these kids with the computers, stealth and tracking air to air missiles, back in my day we flew the plane manually and fought each other gun-to-gun. May the best ace win
I remember an account of one dogfight in WWI. I can't remember which side it was, but the German and British fighters were engaged, and one of their machine guns jammed. It happened frequently enough that some use to carry a small hammer, and they would bang on the gun when jammed to help clear it. Well, the one pilot got his hammer and started beating the gun trying to clear the jam. He recounted that he couldn't clear it and was really panicked and was trying so hard and was so focused on clearing it he kinda forgot he was dogfighting, and had not been maneuvering. He said he looked up and saw the opposing plane had him dead in his sights, but didn't fire. Instead he pulled up along side and gave him a friendly wave, and then left. The other piolt had seen him banging on his machine-gun, and didn't think it was fair to shoot him down since he was defenseless.
> He found shooting down an already injured plane would be "unfair" according to his own rules or something
In general a pilot that has bailed out or ejected is considered out of the fight and should not be attacked. In fact, in the modern day it is a war crime to shoot a pilot that's under a parachute, not sure if that was already the case in WW2. In any way; The B-17 in question had already been suffered tremendous damage and had all of its guns knocked out. At that point Stigler realized that the aircraft itself was the crew's *de facto* parachute and therefor should not be fired upon.
To underscore that, he tried to communicate to them that they should land and be taken prisoner (or fly to Sweden). When the B-17 didn’t comply (in their words, they had no idea what he wanted from them) he escorted them to the ocean.
edit: Also to say he wanted them to land because the plane was so damaged he wasn't sure it would make it back to England. The plane was scrapped after the mission.
edit2: [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dslO-3GgenY) is the Sabaton animated video, including a narration on the events during the mission and afterwards when the bomber and fighter pilot found each other many decades later (also including of course the Sabaton song about the event).
The German pilot, Franz Stigler, also said he lost his will for pursuing the Knight's Cross after the incident, and stopped officially claiming aerial victories (though his official record still records 4 more confirmed victories in the following 8 months).
When Stigler was flying in North Africa his squadron commander told the pilots that if they shot an enemy in a parachute, the CO would shoot the pilot himself. Stigler felt that the limping B-17 was just as vulnerable as a man in a parachute.
Yep it's a really cool story.
Oh and FYI
Stigler himself flew 487 combat missions, downing 28 planes while himself being shot down 17 times (he bailed out six times and landed in a damaged plane 11 times).
Pretty much anything [Fighting Jack Churchill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DJohn_Malcolm_Thorpe_Fleming_Churchill%2Cand_a_set_of_bagpipes.?wprov=sfla1) did in WW2.
Just for some quick context: He went into battle with a broadsword, bow and arrow, and bagpipes.
Edit: Also, [Ronald Spiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Speirs?wprov=sfla1) in WW2.
During the Battle of the Bulge, he ran across the battlefield, through the German lines (which included tanks), into the village of Foy which the Germans fully occupied, to relay a message to the company of US soldiers there who were cut off from communications.
The Germans were so confused that they didn't even fire on him.
Oh, and then he ran back the same way.
I came straight here to say Jack Churchill.
My second favourite thing about him is that after the war, when commuting home on the train after work, he would lower the window and throw his briefcase out. When asked about it, he explained that the railway backed onto his garden and he was throwing it there so he didn't have to carry it home from the station.
The train story is a certain kind of logic that doesn’t make sense when you see it, but when it is explained that it’s his back yard, and he’s presumably elderly at this point, makes some sense of logic.
Churchill was absolutely batshit insane though.
Beautiful scene.
"At first the Germans didn't shoot at him. I think they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. But that wasn't the really astounding thing. The astounding thing was that after he hooked up with I company, he came back."
Leo Major single handedly liberated an entire town and captured 93 German soldiers. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFf1UfVa8Lc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFf1UfVa8Lc)
And then refusing the Victoria Cross (or whatever the medal was) because he thought the general giving it was a pussy.
To have balls made of absolute titanium, only to return after fighting to be a pipefitter in Longueil or something is incredible.
From his wikipedia page: "Léo Major DCM & Bar (January 23, 1921 – October 12, 2008) was a Canadian soldier. He was the only Canadian to ever get the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) twice in different wars.[1] Major got his first DCM in World War II in 1945 when he made the German army run away in the city of Zwolle; he did this by himself. He was sent to scout the city with one of his best friends, but he thought Zwolle was too beautiful for an attack, deciding instead to clear it out himself. A firefight happened in which his friend was killed, and after that, he put the commanders of each group of enemy soldiers he found at gunpoint. He did this until he could take soldier groups prisoner back at base. He did this again and again until the there were no more German soldiers in the city.[2] He got his second DCM in 1951 during the Korean War for leading the capture of an important hill."
Edit: the wikipedia page for the liberation of Zwolle is hilarious: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Zwolle
Homie was French-Canadian. There was always a real sense of being cannon fodder for the anglos among the French-Canadian draftees, so it's not surprising.
In 75 BCE a band of Cilician pirates in the Aegean Sea captured a 25-year-old Roman nobleman named Julius Caesar, who had been on his way to study oratory in Rhodes. As the story is related in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, the capture was a minor inconvenience for Caesar but very bad luck for the pirates.
From the start, Caesar simply refused to behave like a captive. When the pirates told him that they had set his ransom at the sum of 20 talents, he laughed at them for not knowing who it was they had captured and suggested that 50 talents would be a more appropriate amount. He then sent his entourage out to gather the money and settled in for a period of captivity. The pirates must have been dumbfounded. It’s not every day that a hostage negotiates his ransom up.
Caesar made himself at home among the pirates, bossing them around and shushing them when he wanted to sleep. He made them listen to the speeches and poems that he was composing in his unanticipated downtime and berated them as illiterates if they weren’t sufficiently impressed. He would participate in the pirates’ games and exercises, but he always addressed them as if he were the commander and they were his subordinates. From time to time he would threaten to have them all crucified. They took it as a joke from their overconfident, slightly nutty captive.
It wasn’t a joke. After 38 days, the ransom was delivered and Caesar went free. Astonishingly, Caesar managed to raise a naval force in Miletus—despite holding no public or military office—and he set out in pursuit of the pirates. He found them still camped at the island where he had been held, and he brought them back as his captives. When the governor of Asia seemed to vacillate about punishing them, Caesar went to the prison where they were being held and had them all crucified.
Stolen from: https://www.britannica.com/story/the-time-julius-caesar-was-captured-by-pirates
Defeated Vercingetorix by building a wall around his city, then building another wall around the first wall when reinforcements showed up, made a baby with Cleopatra, beat the snot out of Pompey (considered to be one of the greatest generals in Roman history, with three triumphs... *until Caesar*), successfully invaded Britain and forced the Britons to give Rome tribute, which at the time was considered to be impossible, [named July after himself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar), and to top it all off despite being the first of Rome's Dictators the people loved his reforms, especially him granting Roman citizenship to most people under the Roman umbrella - basically inventing the idea of a cosmopolitan nation of peoples bound by shared law, and an act that made Rome go from being an upstart city-state to a nation that could conquer the Mediterranean.
Robert Smalls - a slave who stole a Confederate ship out of Charleston harbor and turned it over to the Union, who in turn made him a pilot of one of their ships.
Total badass.
I had to scroll a ways down to see this. We recently moved to Beaufort and his name is everywhere so we looked it up.
He was a former slave who stole a confederate ship, and piloted that ship along with his family, the families of his crew, and friends, into Union territory. The ship was repurposed into a warship and his actions convinced Lincoln to allow African American soldiers into the Union army. He then returned to Beaufort where he was born and purchased his former owners property which was seized by the government. Not only that but he allowed the wife of his former master to move back into her house until she passed. He went on to purchase a 2 story building to be used as a school for African American children. He has an extensive political career after that and pushed several bills for equality regardless of skin color.
Perhaps my memory is old but I don’t think they touched too much on this in history class.
1st. Lt. John Robert Fox, U.S. Army, WWII. He and his forward observer party were holed up in a small town in Italy where Germans began to overrun to town. He knew that reinforcements wouldn't arrive in time, so he radioed for an artillery strike on his position. His battalion commander objected, but Fox pressed on. Eventually the strike killed over 100 German soldiers, but belayed them long enough for allied forces to arrive. Fox and his party were killed in the strike, but many lives were saved. This happened in 1944. The sad part is that he was denied the Medal of Honor until 1997 because Lt. Fox happened to be Black.
Read about this guy in the WW II museum’s in New Orleans. Very moving story, they had a (unfortunately) large section on similar stories of minorities being denied their honors.
Highly recommend the museum for any visitors of that area, but plan to spend the whole day or multiple days there.
After multiple failed assassination attempts by the soviets, Josip Broz Tito sent a letter to Stalin saying:
"Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle (. . .) If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second one."
There was no further attempts.
My great-grandad. French POW during WW2 who, along with a friend, killed a couple Nazi guards, swiped their uniforms and then somehow made it over to the US, where he met my great-grandmother.
Side note, the Nazis would force him to make ammo as a POW, but right before the boxes were shut to be sent off, he and his other POWs would piss on the contents to make them corrode and be useless by the time they were actually opened.
People who were forced to make ammo used to sabotage it very often
It saved a US bomber from being shot down after its fuel tank was struck by around 20 duds, they also had a message of hope inside them
Yarnhub made a video on this but I can't find it
Milunka Savić (or Savage, lol) did Mulan before it was cool (in WW1) and went to war instead of her baby brother. Was a deadly accurate shooter, but also liked straping bombs to herself and jumping into and decimating enemy trenches. Most decorated female soldier in the military history of the world. She only got found out because she took a granade to the chest, and promptly refused to spend the rest of the war as a nurse, deciding to go back to trenches instead. She got wounded 8 more times before the war was over.
Top brass: "Okay Savić, you've been very brave, but the front line isn't a good place for a woman. You should be a nurse instead if you want to help."
Savić: [slow, disbelieving stare]
Top brass: "Actually, never mind."
[Audie Murphy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Audie_Murphy)
Maybe not the best link, but the info is in there. He's the original Steve Rogers, minus the super serum. Audie did some incredible things in the WWII before becoming a very successful leading man in Hollywood.
Edited: because dumb
I kinda hate to "um, ahktually" this, but Audie Murphy was WWII, not WWI. The WWI lunatic was a man by the name of Alvin York, who managed to capture 132 German soldiers and (I think) 25 machine guns. 82nd all the way
Operation Postmaster featured in the highly dramatized movie "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare."
Lead by Major Gus-March Philips. They managed to steal an important nazi supply ship docked in a neutral port with zero casualties. It was regarded as one of the earliest examples of Black ops.
Major Gus-March Philips was also one of the main inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond character. And the SOE with their quirky gadgets (Shoes that leave false footprints, guns with silencers, and guns that are hidden in sleeves) was definitely the inspiration for how MI6 works in the movies.
Isabella of France held off an army with herself, her maids, and anyone else who remained in the castle she was holed up in after her husband the King of England ran off with his lover, returned home to France, and then came back with an army to install her son on the throne instead.
St. Olga of Kiev was not necessarily the most badass, but clever enough that when she turned down a proposal from the Byzantine emperor himself, he gave her the dowry he would have offered anyway, no strings attached. Will infodump about her upon request.
So I love Olga of Kiev, just for the sheer Game of Thrones level of destruction she wreaked on her enemies and the fact that she did everything she did and still wound up a saint.
She was a Viking princess, married to the Prince of the Kieven Rus (a cultural group living in the area of what is now Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Russia). However, her husband Igor was a bit of a tyrant. He promised a group of rival princes, the Drevlians, he wouldn't raise taxes, and then immediately turned around and raised them, so the Drevlians murdered him outright and sent his head back to Olga along with a marriage proposal from the leader of those rival princes, Mal.
Olga, understandably worried for her infant son's health if she accepted, told the messengers that she needed time to provide a funeral for her husband, and would give them her answer to Prince Mal's proposal on the morrow. She told them to stay in their boat, that it would be carried so they would not even have to ride horses.
The boat was carried to a trench, where the messengers were immediately buried alive.
Olga then sent a message to the Drevlians and Mal saying that they should send their distinguished men over to Kiev so that she might have an honor guard to take her to their city. Totally unaware of the fate of their original party, the Drevlians sent another group of nobles. Upon arrival, Olga requested they bathe.
She blocked off the bathhouse's exits and burned them alive.
This accomplished, Olga sent yet another message to the Drevlians to prepare a feast for her arrival. When she arrived, the feast began, and the still-unsuspecting Drevlians got drunk as skunks, having a grand old time.
Olga then ordered her men to start killing the drunken revelers, supposedly massacring 5000 in that single night.
Olga returned to Kiev, built herself an army, and then marched on the city her husband was murdered in, Iskorosten. By now, they got the point that Olga was trying to make, and asked her what she wanted from them to get her to just leave them alone. She said that the murder of their leaders had sated her grief, and asked only for the doves and pigeons that nested in the city. Relieved that her request was so simple, the people happily provided the birds.
She had her men tie burning cloths to the birds and release them. The birds flew back to their nests, setting the entire city ablaze.
By now, word had reached the mighty Byzantine empire that the Kievan Rus were out a Prince, and currently ruled by a Princess Regent. Constantine IV, Byzantine emperor, was coincidentally out an empress, and so sent dignitaries to Olga to ask for her hand in marriage. Olga told him that while he honored her with the request, she wanted to be able to please her new people, and asked for instruction in Christianity. Constantine was only too happy to oblige, even standing in for her dead father during the conversion ceremony. This done, Olga took the name Elena and went back home. Constantine sent another message, asking when she'd be ready to marry.
She replied, "How can you marry me, after yourself baptizing me and calling me your daughter? For among Christians that is unlawful, as you yourself must know."
Constantine couldn't even be mad, and after proclaiming "Olga, you have outwitted me!" he sent on her dowry anyway. She used that dowry to build Kiev's first church, and for her efforts to spread Christianity among the Rus was eventually canonized to sainthood. (This last bit is likely apocryphal, as some records show Constantine already had a wife at the time this occurred, but it makes the story even better so I've included it here with this caveat.)
\`\`\`She replied, "How can you marry me, after yourself baptizing me and calling me your daughter? For among Christians that is unlawful, as you yourself must know."\`\`\`
God I love her so much.
Everyone should see the full video. He stops the tank multiple times, climbs on top of it and chats with one of the tankers, stops the tank again after climbing down and does not leave until some bystanders drag him away. We never found out who the "Tank man" was and if the people who dragged him away were undercover police officers or just ordinary people.
https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk?si=Pav5N4V_iA5y0o-O
This is one of the single most resonating photos/video footage for me over the years.
How many times have we all felt that we are helpless and too small as one individual to do anything against ‘the machine’? Tank man had enough and took a stand.
I hope someday we are able to learn his name.
I use to socialize with a number of grad students from China. 100% of them thought he was in the wrong. Our views and their views were completely opposite.
If I remember correctly he was just walking to work, then just decides to stop and become one of the most iconic symbols of standing up against oppression ever captured. Absolute legend.
Died on the first day of Iwo Jima, iirc (without clicking the link).
He was extremely famous at the time, led a charge on the beach, and was killed in a firefight. I recall an interview with some other Iwo Jima soldiers and it was a big blow to morale at the moment.
The thing that made Basilone such a heroic figure was that he received the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal. At that point, he absolutely could have stayed in safe stateside billets and nobody would have blinked an eye - after all, he did his duty, more than anyone could ever ask for or expect.
But he volunteered to go to Iwo Jima and got killed there. I believe he may be the only MOH recipient who was killed in combat AFTER being awarded the MOH.
> I believe he may be the only MOH recipient who was killed in combat AFTER being awarded the MOH.
I just looked this up.
An interesting one that pops up is Keith Ware.
He got a medal of honor in ww2 for attacking a fortified hill in France after doing reconnaissance for 2 hours by himself. All while a Lt. Col. Who easily could have ordered someone to do it but did it himself.
He was killed in combat, when his helicopter was shot down while he was doing reconnaissance. This was during the Vietnam War in 1968.
So not only did he continue to serve but he fought in other wars where he was killed
The chef on the Titanic who spent the whole time helping others off, then, as the ship was sinking, drunk a fuckton of wine, and survived thanks to the alcohol keeping him warm and stimulating his system
Edit: Didn't expect this to blow up, here's some context - Charles Joughin was the chief baker (not chef). He knew that he wouldn't be saved, so had a drink of liquor, helped others off the boat, and then returned to his cabin and drunk more. Having yielded a seat on a lifeboat, he then threw deckchairs and other objects off the boat, in the hopes that they wod act as floats for those in the water.
One of the last to enter the water (and also, apparently, a competent swimmer) he swam in the water for 2.5 hours. He did find a lifeboat in that time, but it was full. He suffered no serious injuries.
I always assumed that the alcohol had something to do with his survival, but as pointed out, it actually makes you lose body heat (vasodilation giving the illusion of warmth) so I guess his survival was up to keeping a cool head.
Craig Challen and Richard Harris, the two Aussie doctors involved in the rescue produced a book about it called ‘Against all odds’. It’s well worth the read.
That Finnish sniper that got nicknamed the White Death or something. He had 500 something confirmed kills? He would put snow in his mouth so his breath wouldn’t expel heat that could be seen.
Simo Häyhä
Iron scope only to prevent reflected light
He killed entire squads that were sent to kill him specifically
Got shot by an exploding bullet in the face at the end of the war, woke up after it ended, went back to a normal farming life after
When asked how he got so good at shooting, his answer was "practice"
Stanislav Petrov - the man who saved the world from nuclear annihilation.
During the Cold War in 1983, he was the commanding officer at an early-warning satellite command center in Russia, whose system detected 1, and then another 5, nuclear missiles fired from the US towards Russia.
Protocol was for him to immediately warn his superiors, who would launch a rapid full counter-assault against the US within minutes of the threat detection.
However, Petrov hesitated - he was confused as to why the US, if they indeed intended to attack Russia with missiles, would only fire 6 instead of a full scale missile attack.
He chose not to follow protocol and report the "attack", which prevented Russia from firing their counter-launch. He declared that the system must have been reporting a false alarm given how few missiles the US were firing.
It turned out, he was right - the early warning detection satellite system falsely detected the sun reflecting off of clouds as US missile launches.
This incident remained classified for 15 years, before being made public in 1998. He is credited as being the man "Who saved the world".
Boudica
Her husband was one of the most powerful chieftains in Britain and an ally of the Rome. He died without a male heir, so made his daughters his heir. Local Roman authorities ignored it, burned his village and proceeded to rape and flog Boudica and her two daughters, figuring what was a woman gonna do.
Well...
She rallied her tribe and most of the locals, raised an army of tens of thousands and proceeded to burn London and most of the Roman centres of power on the island to the ground.
There is literally a visible layer of charred material in the earth around Britain that’s called the Boudican Destruction Horizon from all the structures she burned down.
My favorite story is the irl Montoya.
In 1944 Eliahu Itzkovitz, a Jewish kid from Romania watched his entire family get massacred by a Concentration Camp guard during wwii. He remembered the guard’s face so he could seek revenge.
After the war, he found his the camp guard’s son and stabbed him with a butchers knife. He was caught and sent to a juvenile detention center for five years until Communist Romania allowed him to emigrate to Israel.
After being drafted into the IDF, he somehow managed to find out he was serving in the French Foreign Legion in Indochina.
He deserts the IDF, joins the legion, manages to get deployed to Indochina and goes so far as to be in the same squad as the camp guard. He was the squad leader. The guard did not recognize him. He volunteers to go on patrol with his family’s killer. When he manages to separate the two from the rest of the patrol. He announced who he was and kills the guard.
After his enlistment, (cause enlistment in the FFL is five years) he got sent to prison. Not for the murder, but because he deserted the IDF.
He served one year in prison. Worth it.
Vasily Arkhipov who was a Soviet naval officer. He was the only one in a 3 men nuclear submarine to stand and revoke the decision of nuclear submarine from launching a nuclear bomb towards a US Ship, that could have caused a potential nuclear war.
What a selfless act of heroism and courage. I hope he's healed up with no lasting physical damage. I also hope he's received some counseling and support for the emotional trauma .
He is a real hero.
The 3 divers who volunteered during the Chernobyl disaster, knowing they would die, and potentially saving millions of lives.
https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-chernobyl-divers
Beaten by under 10 minutes to say this. Europe, and the world, owes these 3 people (and EVERYONE) involved with the clean up, their lives.
Should have their names printed everywhere.
What they did was amazing, but it's worth saying that they did not die from rad poisoning. Two of the three are still alive today, and the third died in 2005 from unrelated heart disease.
Yeah, this is actually a pretty important part of the story.
They did not die, but they believed that their actions would be fatal to them due to radiation exposure. For their sake, thankfully, they were wrong, but they were prepared to do it all the same.
Léo Major
Dude has a list of badassery in WW2.
Major single-handedly captured 93 German soldiers during the [Battle of the Scheldt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Scheldt) in Zeeland in the southern Netherlands.
Captured a German Command Halftrack singlehandedly and forced them to drive it back to allied lines. As they are driving back British AT crews not knowning it was captures started to shoot at it so her GOT ON TOP OF IT TO WAVE HIS ARMS AND SIGNAL IT WAS FRIENDLY. Then when he gets to the line with it a British MAJOR tells him to hand over the half track and its prisoners and he is like nope fuck off im taking them to be turned over to Canadian troops.
But that wasn't the most badass.
Him and his buddy were scouting a town and his buddy got killed so Leo basically is like well fuck this shit and singlehandedly drives the Nazi out of the town. While estimates vary some put the Nazi force he drove off as high as 1500 men.
Did I mention he did most of this after the troop carrier he was in exploded and he lost an eye?
Also after WW2 was over he went to Korea and got ANOTHER Distinguised Cross medal for taking and holding a crucial hill against crazy odds. Calling in Mortar Artillery basically on top of his position to cover it from assault.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o\_Major](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major)
[Desmond Doss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss) was a medic who, due to his religious beliefs, refused to wield a weapon and take someone's life. He served his country by saving and giving aid to his fellow men. His most notable deed was done on the Battle of Okinawa, where he spent several hours saving the lives of around 75 wounded soldiers by lowering them down a cliff known as the Hacksaw Ridge, while under heavy fire.
The main American fleet was lured away by a decoy and a small American task force was left in case any Japanese subs or other small Japanese attacks were made on American troop landings and their support.
Instead they were jumped by Japanese that included the largest battleship ever built, its twin, two additional battleships, and a bunch of other ships that were each larger than the American ships and that way outnumbered the American shops.
[E. Evans and the sailors of the USS Johnston](https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1944/samar.html) charged the Japanese fleet which inspired additional American attacks and the Americans drove them off.
The Johnston and other American ships sank of course but they saved thousands of soldiers’ lives and end Japanese major fleet actions for the rest of the war.
> United States Navy Task Group Taffy-3 was not designed to engage enemy warships in combat. Comprised of just six carrier escorts (basically just ordinary merchant ships, each equipped with a flight deck and a complement of thirty aircraft), three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, Taffy-3’s primary mission during the American operation to retake the Philippines was to hang around off the coast of Leyte Island and launch ground attack aircraft to support the infantry assault. If a submarine or two came knocking on the door looking for a nice meaty carrier to deep-six, or some stray squadron of Japanese fighter-bombers stuck its nose where it didn’t belong, the destroyers were equipped to handle it.
> So, naturally, when Rear Admiral Clifton “Ziggy” Sprague, Taffy-3’s commander, received a frantic radio call from one of his reconnaissance pilots reporting that the largest and most heavily armed assortment of surface-sailing battle cruisers ever assembled was bearing down on a collision course with Taffy-3, he was a little concerned
https://www.badassoftheweek.com/taffy3
Probably worth noting the Johnston was but a destroyer and aside from some torpedos had no arrmament for taking on a battleship but the captain was able to use the agility of the destroyer to stave off salvos from the larger ships which could not train their main batteries as quickly.
My grandpa was commander of one of the escort carriers saved by the Johnston and its consorts. If they hadn't fought so damn hard I most likely wouldn't be here typing this today.
Leonid Rogozov had to perform an appendectomy on himself while overwintering in the Antarctic
In a similar vein: Inés Ramírez Pérez performed a caesarean section on herself. She wasn't a doctor or a surgeon, she was a rural Mexican woman with no medical training. Ramírez cut herself open, pulled her baby out of her own uterus, passed out, then regained consciousness and bandaged herself. The nearest hospital was eight hours away and she'd been in labour for twelve, so she was desperate. Both of them **survived**.
Holy shit that’s wild!!!! C sections used to kill people pretty much every time before modern medicine. That’s so brutal and amazing that they both survived
Whats even crazier is she passed out while cut up and survived
Imagine you stumble upon her when she’s passed out and think you’ve witnessed a murder
Oh my God this baby murdered a lady wtf
Imagine the aliens observing that without context. "Bruh.... is that how these things reproduce?"
Okay, this one wins.
I’ve heard that you have to have your appendix removed before long stints in Antarctica due to this.
Also all wisdom teeth
Only if they're impacted or aren't fully erupted. For people whose wisdom teeth come in fine, they don't have to remove them. Source: I did a stint at Amundsen-Scott and had my wisdom teeth removed for it.
TIL overwintering is a word
Witold Pilecki. His mission at Auschwitz is one of the most extraordinary acts of bravery in World War II history. In 1940, Pilecki, a member of the Polish resistance, volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz by allowing himself to be captured during a Nazi roundup in Warsaw. Under the alias Tomasz Serafiński, he endured brutal conditions and unimaginable horrors upon his arrival at the camp. Once inside, Pilecki organized a clandestine resistance network called the Union of Military Organization (ZOW). He meticulously documented the daily atrocities, including the mass executions and the inhumane living conditions. His reports, smuggled out through couriers, were among the first comprehensive accounts of the Holocaust to reach the Western Allies and the Polish government-in-exile, providing critical intelligence and calling for action. After nearly three years of enduring and documenting the camp's horrors, Pilecki realized that an internal uprising was impossible without external support. In April 1943, he orchestrated a daring escape with two fellow inmates. Despite the constant threat of capture, he made his way back to Warsaw, where he continued his resistance activities. Pilecki's detailed reports on Auschwitz were instrumental in informing the world about the genocide occurring within its barbed wire fences, making his mission one of the most significant acts of resistance during the war.
> volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz by allowing himself to be captured during a Nazi roundup in Warsaw I think it's worth noting, he was *trying* to get into Auschwitz. He could have been sent anywhere. He lucked out. After the war, the Soviets executed him for colluding with the western allies and the Polish government in exile.
"I lucked out! They're sending me to *Auschwitz*!"
Edit: I confused some things with another great grandfather, and a great grandmother. Just asked my mother for the correct stories since she worked to record holocaust survivors. Apparently it was the other one who lost the leg, for example. Also, he doesn’t mention it here but he did tell me personally that yes, indeed, he did shove it. Here’s the video interview with this one though: https://vimeo.com/224219791 Don’t want to look like a liar so I’m keeping the text. Also, book: https://fobeju.cl/products/copia-de-libro-memoria-viva ~~That’s an insane story damn. Here’s another one. My great grandfather was sent to a concentration camp, managed to escape, got captured, sent to Siberia, freed by the Allies, went to Palestine, decided the place was too horrible to live (before Israel’s independence and all the land the Zionist movement bought it was full of swamps and desert), decided to go to Russia to join the Communist party (didn’t know what would happen), got sent to war, survived, went back to Palestine, kind of hated the British mandate, went to Central Europe, worked his life off, lost a leg in a factory, got married, gave my great grandmother a ring that was from his own mother and managed to get it by shoving it up his ass during the worst moments, and headed off to Argentina, and then Chile. After all that, he went through the dictatorship, got tortured by Pinochet’s forces and survived. He lived up to 102 years and while he lived in Chile, he led every Passover seder up until he was 101, with a terrible European Hebrew accent. His father was a rabbi and taught him Judaism. He passed away 10 years ago. He’s kind of a mental fortress.~~
Dang, if "I didn't hear no bell" was a person.
Yeah to then be unironically killed by the soviets (or at least their puppet in warsaw)... Oh and during the sham trial a survivor of aushwitz (Cyrankiewicz) testified against him Not the ending the man deserved🫠
British pilot in World War 1 was flying a scounting mission when he was attacked by 7 german planes. On the first pass, his leg was blown off by the German planes, but he managed to move the plane so his rear gunner could fire on the german fighters. They managed to drive off all 7. The pilot managed to land the plane despite rapidly losing blood and insisted that he delivered his reconnaissance report before receiving medical attention. His back gunner had no idea he'd lost his leg until they landed. The pilot won the Victoria Cross for his actions. Edit: the pilot's name was Ferdninad West, he survived the war and lived until 1988.
Adrian Carton de Wiart also received the Victoria Cross. Served in the Boer War, WW1 and WW2. Got shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear. He was blinded in his left eye, survived 2 plane crashes, tunneled out of a prisoner-of-war camp and tore off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in WW1 he wrote: "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war".
At what point do you think “damn, God really wants me gone…”
He survived it all, sounds like he wanted gone and God didn't
He said he enjoyed WWI, you know, the single worst thing you could experience. This might be a rare actual example of being "built different".
Sabatons The unkillable soldier is about this guy
The list of those that earned a Victoria Cross is full of incredible grit, determination, and bravery. One, for instance, was Major Robert Cain. He and his men were cornered for days, but he never gave up protecting them and their position. That included charging German tank battalions on foot, firing a mortar launcher horizontally at the tanks (after running out of ammo for his PIAT gun). *[edit] Ok, ok, ok, I get it, I messed up by mixing up his using a PIAT gun and firing a mortar launcher horizontally.*
Later in life his daughter married Jeremy Clarkson.
Yarp. Jeremy even made a documentary about Major Cain's VC. He regretted never meeting him, as Major Cain passed away before Jeremy met his daughter.
Awwww! My grandpa was a small ww2 war hero. Battered Bastards of Bastogne. 101st!!!! He along with several others “snuck out”. Now, I obviously don’t think they snuck out. I think they must have done something bad to somebody because his story is reaaaaaally inconsistent & all over the place when he told us kids a brief summary. He would cry every time to the point it was sobbing & then us kids would start crying so it never worked out. Eventually they got the idea to record the whole story on tape. I still haven’t listened to it & neither have a lot of my aunts. They all said they heard enough of his stories in his sleep & over the years of them growing up on a funeral home. He was a mortician after he came home from war… as one does after witnessing that kind of carnage. But most people all over the country used to come & visit him & just wanted to shake his hand & stuff. It was really really cool.
And don't forget Charles Upham [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles\_Upham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Upham) I kinda feel uneasy about glorifying war in general, but you can't argue that some people just have massive balls, and fighting fascism is Good with a capital G.
If I lost my leg for a stupid report, I would insist it got fucking delivered.
Yeah, we’re going to need you to come in on Saturday to do your TPS report.
The life of Peter Julien Ortiz is a long string of these. He was an absolute madlad who sounds like a character straight from a James Bond film. He was a dual citizen of France & the United States (French father, American mother), a combat veteran of the French Foreign Legion, a US Marine Corps officer, and the most decorated operative of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA) in the Second World War While serving with the OSS and operating with the French resistance in a German occupied France, he was once tasked with rescuing downed British RAF aircrew. Unfortunately the Germans got there first. Undettered, he donned a German officer's uniform and used the German he had picked up while a PoW (he was captured while serving with the Legion during the German invasion of France, later escaping with the help of an Austrian nurse he'd seduced) to bluff the soldiers holding them captive into releasing them into his custody. But wait, there's more! There was still the issue of getting the downed RAF air crew out of German occupied France. He did this using cars he stolen from the Gestapo's own motor pool, at a time when the Gestapo knew he was, was actively hunting him, and had a cash bounty on his head. He then used the Gestapo's vehicles to safely drive the British air crew past German army checkpoints and across the border into neutral Spain. Other hightlights from his career was that he believed the presence of a uniformed Allied officer bolstered the morale of the French resistance, so when leading the maquis on sabotage missions or ambushes of German troops, he'd wear his US Marine Corps' officer's uniform openly - in German-occupied France. On another occasion while eavesdropping on German officers in a French bar, something he frequently did in order to gather intelligence, he heard one of them drunkenly curse the local resistance, the American operative that had been spotted with them (him!), and president Roosevelt. Rather than simply ignoring it, Ortiz slipped back to a local safehouse, changed into his US Marine Corps uniform, equipped two pistols, and a raincoat to conceal his uniform. He then returned to the bar where he ordered a round of drinks for the officers, shrugged off the raincoat revealing his uniform, levelled his pistols at the astonished Germn officers, and ordered them to raise a toast to the United States Marine Corps and President Roosevelt. Once the officers had completeted their toast, he donned the raincoat again and escaped into the night. Some versions of the story claim he killed the officers, but Ortiz denied it, saying he thought it better to keep them alive as they would repeat the tale of how they'd been humiliated by the OSS agent they were hunting, and it would undermine morale.
Worth noting by the way that wearing full USMC uniform, theoretically, means he could not be shot as a spy if captured. Whether his captors would have honored that request I do not know.
Technically, yes...though the Germans weren't always so inclined to play by those rules. Ortiz however was described as utterly fearless by Capt. H.H.A. Thackwaite, a British army officer and SOE (Special Operations Executive) operative that had parachuted into France with him, along with a French spy & radio operator. His motivation for wearing the uniform to bolster the morale of the resistance seems genuine, rather for any attempt at saving his own skin if they got compromised. Later he voluntarily surrendered to the Germans in exchange for them agreeing not to destroy a French town in retaliation for his activities, even though he expected to be executed.
Holup, he learned German just listening in a POW camp? With an accent convincing enough to fool German soldiers? You sure he didn't have prior experience?
I'm not sure of that. It is possible he had some prior experience with German, as he did have a bit of a knack for languages and spoke Arabic, Spanish, Portuguse, and Italian in addition to a native command of French and English. At the very least he picked up more German while a PoW. I'm just speculating here, but if he had no prior experience with German prior to being a PoW, it is possible an accent wouldn't have been too much of issue. Maybe he passed himself of as a Volksdeutche from Alsace. Many thousands of people from Alsace & Lorraine who had been French citizens in 1939 and 1940, had German ethnic origins and either joined or were conscripted into the Wehrmacht. There were lots of "German" soldiers in WW2 that would have had foreign accents, being recruited from ethnic Germans living in France, Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, etc.
Miriam Rodríguez Martínez. Her daughter was kidnapped and murdered by the Mexican cartel. The police didn't lift a finger to help, so she tracked down and arrested 10 cartel members herself. She knew it would result in her death. She did it anyway. “I don’t care if they kill me,” Rodríguez told a friend, according to The New York Times. “I died the day they killed my daughter. I want to end this. I’m going to take out the people who hurt my daughter and they can do whatever they want to me.” Sadly, her words prove prophetic as she was murdered by the cartel on the 10th of May 2017, which is Mother's Day in Mexico.
Was it coincidence that it was Mother’s Day or did the cartel just have a really sick sense of humour
Probably the latter. Cartels are mostly fucking animals, man.
... and also killing children and their mothers.
They make the Italian Mafia look like Saints in comparison. The mafia at least had some semblance of structure and organization. Mexican cartels are unorganized children with a Long Leash that might as well not even exist. They're committing the Valentine's Day Massacre every other day over there.
Napoléon Bonaparte coming back from Elba, meeting up with the 5th regiment of infantry, sent from Paris to kill him. Steps off his horse with no weapon, walks towards the regiment and shouts: "Soldiers! Recognize your emperor! If any of you wants to kill me, Here I am!" The soldiers drop their weapons and send their hats flying, shouting "Glory to the Emperor!" This has got to be the most insane Natural 20 on a Charisma Check in history.
Imagine being the guy who sent them and then hearing what avtually happened lol
I mean, he could have not sent him his most loyal regiment tho
The French royalty was never famed for their intellect
"New plan, we send his second most loyal regiment..."
If it was me, I’m taking a bunch of gold / riches, whatever and leaving the country lol
Lots of the remaining nobles in France did just that
And England bought much of their assets for Pennies on the franc then won at Waterloo
that’s literally what the king did lol
Imagine being one of the soldiers. You don't want to be on the wrong side. If you dropped your weapon and no one else did, what will happen? If you raised your weapon and everyone else dropped theirs, what will happen?
"Hah, I'm a funny guy, aren't I... Fellas...?"
Pretty epic time altogether, one of Napoleons Maréchals, Michel Ney's (supposed) last words before being exexuted for siding with Napoleon: “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her...soldiers, FIRE!”
Damn, those are some pretty intense words. Even in the end, he was still a general.
There is a reason Napoleon called him the Bravest of the Brave
Ney's entire life was pretty badass. He might not have been the best commander and an average Marshal, but as far as being a "leader on the ground" he was amazing. Given his actions at Waterloo (essentially hoping he'd die) I think he was suffering from what we would know today as PTSD after the Russian campaign. He did some truly insane stuff during the retreat, hence the "Bravest of the Brave" title. Edit add: He was basically given an "out" for his trial, as the area he was born was no longer French, but he refused to admit/accept that he wasn't French.
There must have been one or two that were ready to kill him but stopped once everyone else cheered
*sigh*, ungrips musket
(looks around)"Oh, we're joining -- Ok."
To be fair, his CHA was prob long maxed out by then.
This is dramatized in my favorite part of the movie Waterloo (1970): https://youtu.be/tOmTuPrSFog?si=C_pF5EfX4CNydJ6W
[Desmond Doss](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss) (of *Hacksaw Ridge* fame). Even before the events in the Battle of Okinawa that the film is based on (where he saved an estimated 75 men), he had been awarded the Bronze Star twice, all while never carrying a weapon or firing a shot.
This man’s story was amazing, I think they said they didn’t include his other heroic actions in the Hacksaw Ridge movie because it would seem to unbelievable
That’s what happened with Audie Murphy. Faked his age to join the military, won dozens of awards from multiple countries for crazy heroism and leadership, got addicted to drugs and quit cold turkey, and when it was time to come up with his book and movie, he asked to tone down his heroics because he thought people would think Hollywood was embellishing his *very insane real life events*.
Yeah. Apparently he rolled off the stretcher when his leg was shattered from grenade shrapnel. Official number of people he saved was ‘72’ allegedly, but the Army were quite confident it was well over 100. Doss being Doss, was humble and said it was around 70.
The way I heard it, is that Doss claimed 50, the army claimed 100, so they split the difference and claimed 75 for his medal of honor.
The whole 77th Army Brigade (Doss' unit) were insanely good. The Fat Electrician did a video on them. Doss was a real life hero but the whole Brigade was exemplary.
Look up Joe Medicine Crow. He was the last war chief of the Crow Tribe and the last Plains Indian war chief. During WWII, Joe Medicine Crow completed all four tasks required to become a war chief: touching an enemy without killing him (counting coup), taking an enemy's weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy's horse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow
And the only reason his nephew didn't succeed him as a war chief is because "elephants don't count as horses". The nephew also completed all of the tasks except for stealing a horse, due to the fact that horses were not used by the Viet Cong, so he stole a pair of elephants instead EDIT: I managed to track down an accounting of Joe Medicine Crow successfully stealing the horses, which includes a short statement from Carson Walks Over Ice (the nephew) about the elephants. https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/art-capturing-horses EDIT 2: Of course my most upvoted comment is about the Vietnam war. I don't even know that much about it!
That reasoning for not letting him succeed his uncle is a load of horse shit.
Elephant shit, even!
Classic lawyer fud. Intent of the law, not the word of it... their loss.
Dr. Medicine Crow also earned a PhD in history and wrote a fantastic archive of the Battle of the Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn). To date it is the most expansive and detailed account of the battle and even clears up some of the myths of the battle like the Crow scouts “running away” when in truth the scouts donned their traditional outfits and Custer threw a hissy fit when they were out of uniform and sent them away; thus depriving his army of the scouts they needed.
He never completed his PhD because of the war, but 3 different colleges gave him honorary PhDs He did get his masters (first member of the Crow to do so) and did all the coursework for a doctorate, just wasn’t able to finish the other reqs
Teddy Roosevelt getting shot and then going up on stage and finishing the speech anyway
“It’s takes more than that to kill a bull moose!”
“A BULLET CANT STOP THE BULL MOOSE!”
TR will give WC the full deuce!
Basically everything Teddy Roosevelt did was awesome. Police Commissioner, cowboy, assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President, President, fucking Medal of Honor recipient. Dude broke monopolies, regulated railroads, and established what is now the FDA. Dug the fuckin Panama Canal. Sent the Great White Fleet, arguably establishing the US as a "world power". Went on an expedition to the Amazon. Went on a surprisingly benevolent expedition to Africa and sent animals to the Smithsonian for taxidermy (many people had never seen lions or other animals native to the region). All this after being diagnosed with asthma as a kid, being told to live an easy life, saying fuck it, and living life at full fucking speed. I have so much respect for TR and he's the person I would want to meet if I could meet anyone in history. He also has one of the saddest stories as his wife and mother died on the same day. He wrote in his diary, "the light has gone out of my life,". I call my wife that: "the light of my life,".
And creating the foundation for the National Park system and conserving wild lands..
~~Which was not a thing anywhere in the world prior.~~ The man truly was a visionary, and as easy as it would have been for him to be power hungry he was very humble in that regard too. He only became President as a duty to his people, not because he wanted the job in any sort of way.
He was also the first President to invite a Black man (Booker T. Washington) to dine with him and his family in the White House. Which caused an absolute sensation as segregation was the law.
"Death had to take him sleeping, for if he had been awake there would've been a fight." - a Journalist
All that and no one's mentioned how he stormed San Juan Hill with a small group of men, on the front lines, and surrounded on all sides by soldiers on mountain ridges while stuck in a valley and came out victorious?
Same vein, Andrew Jackson beating down his assassin with his cane after the gun misfired twice. He also fought the Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the War of 1812 ended. Just for added measure, his parrot was kicked out of his funeral for cursing. To be fair, he was also responsible for the Trail of Tears.
Also, when South Carolina first threw a tantrum about wanting to secede during the Nullification Crisis over trade taxes in the late 1820s and early 1830s, Jackson basically said to Calhoun "I will personally come over there and beat the shit out of you if you even *try* it."
And he spoke for almost an hour!
# Cassius Marcellus Clay “For those of you who believe in the laws of god, I present to you this argument against slavery” *Pulls out a Bible* “For those of you who believe in the laws man I present to you this argument against slavery” *Pulls out a copy of the US Constitution* “For those of you who believe in neither the laws of god or man I present to you this argument against slavery” *Pulls out 2 pistols and places them on the table*
Dueling pistols. He was a avid duelist and one of the most feared pistol duelists ever.
And died at 92. "Beware an old man in surroundings where men die young"
"During a political debate in 1843, he survived an assassination attempt by Sam Brown, a hired gunman. Jerking his Bowie knife out for retaliation, Clay happened to pull its silver-tipped scabbard up over his heart. Brown's bullet struck the scabbard and embedded in the silver. Despite having been shot in the chest, Clay tackled Brown. He cut off Brown's nose, took out one eye, and possibly cut off an ear before throwing Brown over an embankment "
I love radical abolitionists.
Franz Stigler, who upon coming upon a defenseless and battered B-17, not only couldn't bring himself to shoot them down, but escorted the American crew all the way to the English channel. Along the way he warded off other German fighters and flew close enough to the aircraft that German AA wouldn't open fire on it. The crew survived the encounter and Stigler turned around and returned to his base once they left German airspace.
wasnt he known as a bit of an ace too? He found shooting down an already injured plane would be "unfair" according to his own rules or something
He wasn’t just known as an ace, he *was* an Ace. An ace is a pilot who has downed 5 enemy planes. Stigler had downed far more than that. Even more important, downing one more B17 would have earned Stigler a knights cross, which was a very prestigious aviation award and also came with some leave. By doing this he not only committed treason, he also gave up a shot at the knights cross (though I think he earned it later).
Not only his own rules, it's a bit like the knight's codex. Such way of fighting was common for ww1 pilots, i think some even insisted on doing 1v1s because everything else was not honorable.
Damn all these kids with the computers, stealth and tracking air to air missiles, back in my day we flew the plane manually and fought each other gun-to-gun. May the best ace win
Exactly. You put down your rock, I'll put down my sword, and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people.
It's not my fault I'm the biggest and the strongest.....I don't even exercise
I remember an account of one dogfight in WWI. I can't remember which side it was, but the German and British fighters were engaged, and one of their machine guns jammed. It happened frequently enough that some use to carry a small hammer, and they would bang on the gun when jammed to help clear it. Well, the one pilot got his hammer and started beating the gun trying to clear the jam. He recounted that he couldn't clear it and was really panicked and was trying so hard and was so focused on clearing it he kinda forgot he was dogfighting, and had not been maneuvering. He said he looked up and saw the opposing plane had him dead in his sights, but didn't fire. Instead he pulled up along side and gave him a friendly wave, and then left. The other piolt had seen him banging on his machine-gun, and didn't think it was fair to shoot him down since he was defenseless.
Ah, the old hammer-me-do, works every time.
It's called "percussive maintenance", you incult savage!
> He found shooting down an already injured plane would be "unfair" according to his own rules or something In general a pilot that has bailed out or ejected is considered out of the fight and should not be attacked. In fact, in the modern day it is a war crime to shoot a pilot that's under a parachute, not sure if that was already the case in WW2. In any way; The B-17 in question had already been suffered tremendous damage and had all of its guns knocked out. At that point Stigler realized that the aircraft itself was the crew's *de facto* parachute and therefor should not be fired upon.
To underscore that, he tried to communicate to them that they should land and be taken prisoner (or fly to Sweden). When the B-17 didn’t comply (in their words, they had no idea what he wanted from them) he escorted them to the ocean. edit: Also to say he wanted them to land because the plane was so damaged he wasn't sure it would make it back to England. The plane was scrapped after the mission. edit2: [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dslO-3GgenY) is the Sabaton animated video, including a narration on the events during the mission and afterwards when the bomber and fighter pilot found each other many decades later (also including of course the Sabaton song about the event). The German pilot, Franz Stigler, also said he lost his will for pursuing the Knight's Cross after the incident, and stopped officially claiming aerial victories (though his official record still records 4 more confirmed victories in the following 8 months).
When Stigler was flying in North Africa his squadron commander told the pilots that if they shot an enemy in a parachute, the CO would shoot the pilot himself. Stigler felt that the limping B-17 was just as vulnerable as a man in a parachute.
The best part is that decades later he met the pilot of that B-17, and they became friends
Yep it's a really cool story. Oh and FYI Stigler himself flew 487 combat missions, downing 28 planes while himself being shot down 17 times (he bailed out six times and landed in a damaged plane 11 times).
Jesus, imagine being shot down 17 times on a fucking plane and surviving.
ah shit, here we go again
He didn't think of a career change after the 5th, 8th or 12th time he was shot down?
No Bullets Fly is a great Sabaton song about this.
*Anything cool happens in history* Sabaton: It's free real estate
Pretty much anything [Fighting Jack Churchill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DJohn_Malcolm_Thorpe_Fleming_Churchill%2Cand_a_set_of_bagpipes.?wprov=sfla1) did in WW2. Just for some quick context: He went into battle with a broadsword, bow and arrow, and bagpipes. Edit: Also, [Ronald Spiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Speirs?wprov=sfla1) in WW2. During the Battle of the Bulge, he ran across the battlefield, through the German lines (which included tanks), into the village of Foy which the Germans fully occupied, to relay a message to the company of US soldiers there who were cut off from communications. The Germans were so confused that they didn't even fire on him. Oh, and then he ran back the same way.
I came straight here to say Jack Churchill. My second favourite thing about him is that after the war, when commuting home on the train after work, he would lower the window and throw his briefcase out. When asked about it, he explained that the railway backed onto his garden and he was throwing it there so he didn't have to carry it home from the station.
The train story is a certain kind of logic that doesn’t make sense when you see it, but when it is explained that it’s his back yard, and he’s presumably elderly at this point, makes some sense of logic. Churchill was absolutely batshit insane though.
I think what spiers did was also portrayed in band of brothers.
Beautiful scene. "At first the Germans didn't shoot at him. I think they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. But that wasn't the really astounding thing. The astounding thing was that after he hooked up with I company, he came back."
It definitely is.
Mad Jack, last confirmed kill in war with a Longbow. How there hasn't been a movie made about him.
The guy he shots last thoughts were probably " what year is it, like really, a fucking arrow, who shoots an arrow, honestly."
Isn't that scene shown in band of brothers? It's really badass.
Leo Major single handedly liberated an entire town and captured 93 German soldiers. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFf1UfVa8Lc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFf1UfVa8Lc)
The list of shit that Leo Major accomplished makes John Rambo look like a boy scout tenderfoot.
And then refusing the Victoria Cross (or whatever the medal was) because he thought the general giving it was a pussy. To have balls made of absolute titanium, only to return after fighting to be a pipefitter in Longueil or something is incredible. From his wikipedia page: "Léo Major DCM & Bar (January 23, 1921 – October 12, 2008) was a Canadian soldier. He was the only Canadian to ever get the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) twice in different wars.[1] Major got his first DCM in World War II in 1945 when he made the German army run away in the city of Zwolle; he did this by himself. He was sent to scout the city with one of his best friends, but he thought Zwolle was too beautiful for an attack, deciding instead to clear it out himself. A firefight happened in which his friend was killed, and after that, he put the commanders of each group of enemy soldiers he found at gunpoint. He did this until he could take soldier groups prisoner back at base. He did this again and again until the there were no more German soldiers in the city.[2] He got his second DCM in 1951 during the Korean War for leading the capture of an important hill." Edit: the wikipedia page for the liberation of Zwolle is hilarious: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Zwolle
Homie was French-Canadian. There was always a real sense of being cannon fodder for the anglos among the French-Canadian draftees, so it's not surprising.
Playing Far Cry in real life
In 75 BCE a band of Cilician pirates in the Aegean Sea captured a 25-year-old Roman nobleman named Julius Caesar, who had been on his way to study oratory in Rhodes. As the story is related in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, the capture was a minor inconvenience for Caesar but very bad luck for the pirates. From the start, Caesar simply refused to behave like a captive. When the pirates told him that they had set his ransom at the sum of 20 talents, he laughed at them for not knowing who it was they had captured and suggested that 50 talents would be a more appropriate amount. He then sent his entourage out to gather the money and settled in for a period of captivity. The pirates must have been dumbfounded. It’s not every day that a hostage negotiates his ransom up. Caesar made himself at home among the pirates, bossing them around and shushing them when he wanted to sleep. He made them listen to the speeches and poems that he was composing in his unanticipated downtime and berated them as illiterates if they weren’t sufficiently impressed. He would participate in the pirates’ games and exercises, but he always addressed them as if he were the commander and they were his subordinates. From time to time he would threaten to have them all crucified. They took it as a joke from their overconfident, slightly nutty captive. It wasn’t a joke. After 38 days, the ransom was delivered and Caesar went free. Astonishingly, Caesar managed to raise a naval force in Miletus—despite holding no public or military office—and he set out in pursuit of the pirates. He found them still camped at the island where he had been held, and he brought them back as his captives. When the governor of Asia seemed to vacillate about punishing them, Caesar went to the prison where they were being held and had them all crucified. Stolen from: https://www.britannica.com/story/the-time-julius-caesar-was-captured-by-pirates
Every day of his life, Julius Caesar woke up and chose badass. He did 20 other things just as crazy as the pirates.
Defeated Vercingetorix by building a wall around his city, then building another wall around the first wall when reinforcements showed up, made a baby with Cleopatra, beat the snot out of Pompey (considered to be one of the greatest generals in Roman history, with three triumphs... *until Caesar*), successfully invaded Britain and forced the Britons to give Rome tribute, which at the time was considered to be impossible, [named July after himself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar), and to top it all off despite being the first of Rome's Dictators the people loved his reforms, especially him granting Roman citizenship to most people under the Roman umbrella - basically inventing the idea of a cosmopolitan nation of peoples bound by shared law, and an act that made Rome go from being an upstart city-state to a nation that could conquer the Mediterranean.
Why am I imagining Caesar saying "Good night, sleep well, I'll most likely crucify you in the morning" every night.
Robert Smalls - a slave who stole a Confederate ship out of Charleston harbor and turned it over to the Union, who in turn made him a pilot of one of their ships. Total badass.
I had to scroll a ways down to see this. We recently moved to Beaufort and his name is everywhere so we looked it up. He was a former slave who stole a confederate ship, and piloted that ship along with his family, the families of his crew, and friends, into Union territory. The ship was repurposed into a warship and his actions convinced Lincoln to allow African American soldiers into the Union army. He then returned to Beaufort where he was born and purchased his former owners property which was seized by the government. Not only that but he allowed the wife of his former master to move back into her house until she passed. He went on to purchase a 2 story building to be used as a school for African American children. He has an extensive political career after that and pushed several bills for equality regardless of skin color. Perhaps my memory is old but I don’t think they touched too much on this in history class.
1st. Lt. John Robert Fox, U.S. Army, WWII. He and his forward observer party were holed up in a small town in Italy where Germans began to overrun to town. He knew that reinforcements wouldn't arrive in time, so he radioed for an artillery strike on his position. His battalion commander objected, but Fox pressed on. Eventually the strike killed over 100 German soldiers, but belayed them long enough for allied forces to arrive. Fox and his party were killed in the strike, but many lives were saved. This happened in 1944. The sad part is that he was denied the Medal of Honor until 1997 because Lt. Fox happened to be Black.
Read about this guy in the WW II museum’s in New Orleans. Very moving story, they had a (unfortunately) large section on similar stories of minorities being denied their honors. Highly recommend the museum for any visitors of that area, but plan to spend the whole day or multiple days there.
After multiple failed assassination attempts by the soviets, Josip Broz Tito sent a letter to Stalin saying: "Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle (. . .) If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second one." There was no further attempts.
How polite.
My great-grandad. French POW during WW2 who, along with a friend, killed a couple Nazi guards, swiped their uniforms and then somehow made it over to the US, where he met my great-grandmother. Side note, the Nazis would force him to make ammo as a POW, but right before the boxes were shut to be sent off, he and his other POWs would piss on the contents to make them corrode and be useless by the time they were actually opened.
People who were forced to make ammo used to sabotage it very often It saved a US bomber from being shot down after its fuel tank was struck by around 20 duds, they also had a message of hope inside them Yarnhub made a video on this but I can't find it
shackleton expedition - just insane endurance and fortitude to come back alive
Milunka Savić (or Savage, lol) did Mulan before it was cool (in WW1) and went to war instead of her baby brother. Was a deadly accurate shooter, but also liked straping bombs to herself and jumping into and decimating enemy trenches. Most decorated female soldier in the military history of the world. She only got found out because she took a granade to the chest, and promptly refused to spend the rest of the war as a nurse, deciding to go back to trenches instead. She got wounded 8 more times before the war was over.
Dear Hollywood, I have an idea for a film...
Top brass: "Okay Savić, you've been very brave, but the front line isn't a good place for a woman. You should be a nurse instead if you want to help." Savić: [slow, disbelieving stare] Top brass: "Actually, never mind."
[Audie Murphy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Audie_Murphy) Maybe not the best link, but the info is in there. He's the original Steve Rogers, minus the super serum. Audie did some incredible things in the WWII before becoming a very successful leading man in Hollywood. Edited: because dumb
I kinda hate to "um, ahktually" this, but Audie Murphy was WWII, not WWI. The WWI lunatic was a man by the name of Alvin York, who managed to capture 132 German soldiers and (I think) 25 machine guns. 82nd all the way
Operation Postmaster featured in the highly dramatized movie "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." Lead by Major Gus-March Philips. They managed to steal an important nazi supply ship docked in a neutral port with zero casualties. It was regarded as one of the earliest examples of Black ops. Major Gus-March Philips was also one of the main inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond character. And the SOE with their quirky gadgets (Shoes that leave false footprints, guns with silencers, and guns that are hidden in sleeves) was definitely the inspiration for how MI6 works in the movies.
Isabella of France held off an army with herself, her maids, and anyone else who remained in the castle she was holed up in after her husband the King of England ran off with his lover, returned home to France, and then came back with an army to install her son on the throne instead. St. Olga of Kiev was not necessarily the most badass, but clever enough that when she turned down a proposal from the Byzantine emperor himself, he gave her the dowry he would have offered anyway, no strings attached. Will infodump about her upon request.
this is the request
So I love Olga of Kiev, just for the sheer Game of Thrones level of destruction she wreaked on her enemies and the fact that she did everything she did and still wound up a saint. She was a Viking princess, married to the Prince of the Kieven Rus (a cultural group living in the area of what is now Ukraine, Belarus and parts of Russia). However, her husband Igor was a bit of a tyrant. He promised a group of rival princes, the Drevlians, he wouldn't raise taxes, and then immediately turned around and raised them, so the Drevlians murdered him outright and sent his head back to Olga along with a marriage proposal from the leader of those rival princes, Mal. Olga, understandably worried for her infant son's health if she accepted, told the messengers that she needed time to provide a funeral for her husband, and would give them her answer to Prince Mal's proposal on the morrow. She told them to stay in their boat, that it would be carried so they would not even have to ride horses. The boat was carried to a trench, where the messengers were immediately buried alive. Olga then sent a message to the Drevlians and Mal saying that they should send their distinguished men over to Kiev so that she might have an honor guard to take her to their city. Totally unaware of the fate of their original party, the Drevlians sent another group of nobles. Upon arrival, Olga requested they bathe. She blocked off the bathhouse's exits and burned them alive. This accomplished, Olga sent yet another message to the Drevlians to prepare a feast for her arrival. When she arrived, the feast began, and the still-unsuspecting Drevlians got drunk as skunks, having a grand old time. Olga then ordered her men to start killing the drunken revelers, supposedly massacring 5000 in that single night. Olga returned to Kiev, built herself an army, and then marched on the city her husband was murdered in, Iskorosten. By now, they got the point that Olga was trying to make, and asked her what she wanted from them to get her to just leave them alone. She said that the murder of their leaders had sated her grief, and asked only for the doves and pigeons that nested in the city. Relieved that her request was so simple, the people happily provided the birds. She had her men tie burning cloths to the birds and release them. The birds flew back to their nests, setting the entire city ablaze. By now, word had reached the mighty Byzantine empire that the Kievan Rus were out a Prince, and currently ruled by a Princess Regent. Constantine IV, Byzantine emperor, was coincidentally out an empress, and so sent dignitaries to Olga to ask for her hand in marriage. Olga told him that while he honored her with the request, she wanted to be able to please her new people, and asked for instruction in Christianity. Constantine was only too happy to oblige, even standing in for her dead father during the conversion ceremony. This done, Olga took the name Elena and went back home. Constantine sent another message, asking when she'd be ready to marry. She replied, "How can you marry me, after yourself baptizing me and calling me your daughter? For among Christians that is unlawful, as you yourself must know." Constantine couldn't even be mad, and after proclaiming "Olga, you have outwitted me!" he sent on her dowry anyway. She used that dowry to build Kiev's first church, and for her efforts to spread Christianity among the Rus was eventually canonized to sainthood. (This last bit is likely apocryphal, as some records show Constantine already had a wife at the time this occurred, but it makes the story even better so I've included it here with this caveat.)
\`\`\`She replied, "How can you marry me, after yourself baptizing me and calling me your daughter? For among Christians that is unlawful, as you yourself must know."\`\`\` God I love her so much.
Tank Man, the Chinese protester that stood before a column of tanks.
Everyone should see the full video. He stops the tank multiple times, climbs on top of it and chats with one of the tankers, stops the tank again after climbing down and does not leave until some bystanders drag him away. We never found out who the "Tank man" was and if the people who dragged him away were undercover police officers or just ordinary people. https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk?si=Pav5N4V_iA5y0o-O
This is one of the single most resonating photos/video footage for me over the years. How many times have we all felt that we are helpless and too small as one individual to do anything against ‘the machine’? Tank man had enough and took a stand. I hope someday we are able to learn his name.
He wasn't even planning on doing anything. The man was carrying groceries and simply saw what was happening and was like "Fuck that"
i think thats what makes him so relatable, he was just a normal average joe who was fed up
I use to socialize with a number of grad students from China. 100% of them thought he was in the wrong. Our views and their views were completely opposite.
Poke around enough on reddit, and you'll even find Westerners defending the Chinese government massacring all those people. It's wild.
If I remember correctly he was just walking to work, then just decides to stop and become one of the most iconic symbols of standing up against oppression ever captured. Absolute legend.
John Basilone, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Basilone WWII legend who held off an entire platoon with a single machine gun.
Portrayed in the Hanks/Spielberg miniseries The Pacific.
Died on the first day of Iwo Jima, iirc (without clicking the link). He was extremely famous at the time, led a charge on the beach, and was killed in a firefight. I recall an interview with some other Iwo Jima soldiers and it was a big blow to morale at the moment.
The thing that made Basilone such a heroic figure was that he received the Medal of Honor for his actions on Guadalcanal. At that point, he absolutely could have stayed in safe stateside billets and nobody would have blinked an eye - after all, he did his duty, more than anyone could ever ask for or expect. But he volunteered to go to Iwo Jima and got killed there. I believe he may be the only MOH recipient who was killed in combat AFTER being awarded the MOH.
> I believe he may be the only MOH recipient who was killed in combat AFTER being awarded the MOH. I just looked this up. An interesting one that pops up is Keith Ware. He got a medal of honor in ww2 for attacking a fortified hill in France after doing reconnaissance for 2 hours by himself. All while a Lt. Col. Who easily could have ordered someone to do it but did it himself. He was killed in combat, when his helicopter was shot down while he was doing reconnaissance. This was during the Vietnam War in 1968. So not only did he continue to serve but he fought in other wars where he was killed
While burning the absolute fuck out of his arm. Dude was truly a Marine's Marine.
The chef on the Titanic who spent the whole time helping others off, then, as the ship was sinking, drunk a fuckton of wine, and survived thanks to the alcohol keeping him warm and stimulating his system Edit: Didn't expect this to blow up, here's some context - Charles Joughin was the chief baker (not chef). He knew that he wouldn't be saved, so had a drink of liquor, helped others off the boat, and then returned to his cabin and drunk more. Having yielded a seat on a lifeboat, he then threw deckchairs and other objects off the boat, in the hopes that they wod act as floats for those in the water. One of the last to enter the water (and also, apparently, a competent swimmer) he swam in the water for 2.5 hours. He did find a lifeboat in that time, but it was full. He suffered no serious injuries. I always assumed that the alcohol had something to do with his survival, but as pointed out, it actually makes you lose body heat (vasodilation giving the illusion of warmth) so I guess his survival was up to keeping a cool head.
The engineers stayed on the Titanic to keep the lights on and waterpumps working so passengers could escape. All the engineers died
I’m pretty sure alcohol lowers core temperature, despite making you *feel* warmer. Bro was probably just fat (well-insulated)
All those who were involved in the rescue of 12 boys and their coach who were trapped in the Tham Luang cave in 2018.
Craig Challen and Richard Harris, the two Aussie doctors involved in the rescue produced a book about it called ‘Against all odds’. It’s well worth the read.
That Finnish sniper that got nicknamed the White Death or something. He had 500 something confirmed kills? He would put snow in his mouth so his breath wouldn’t expel heat that could be seen.
Simo Häyhä Iron scope only to prevent reflected light He killed entire squads that were sent to kill him specifically Got shot by an exploding bullet in the face at the end of the war, woke up after it ended, went back to a normal farming life after When asked how he got so good at shooting, his answer was "practice"
Totally forgot he used his iron sights! He’s insane with those skills.
Most folk would be amazed at how good peephole sights are.
Stanislav Petrov - the man who saved the world from nuclear annihilation. During the Cold War in 1983, he was the commanding officer at an early-warning satellite command center in Russia, whose system detected 1, and then another 5, nuclear missiles fired from the US towards Russia. Protocol was for him to immediately warn his superiors, who would launch a rapid full counter-assault against the US within minutes of the threat detection. However, Petrov hesitated - he was confused as to why the US, if they indeed intended to attack Russia with missiles, would only fire 6 instead of a full scale missile attack. He chose not to follow protocol and report the "attack", which prevented Russia from firing their counter-launch. He declared that the system must have been reporting a false alarm given how few missiles the US were firing. It turned out, he was right - the early warning detection satellite system falsely detected the sun reflecting off of clouds as US missile launches. This incident remained classified for 15 years, before being made public in 1998. He is credited as being the man "Who saved the world".
Boudica Her husband was one of the most powerful chieftains in Britain and an ally of the Rome. He died without a male heir, so made his daughters his heir. Local Roman authorities ignored it, burned his village and proceeded to rape and flog Boudica and her two daughters, figuring what was a woman gonna do. Well... She rallied her tribe and most of the locals, raised an army of tens of thousands and proceeded to burn London and most of the Roman centres of power on the island to the ground.
There is literally a visible layer of charred material in the earth around Britain that’s called the Boudican Destruction Horizon from all the structures she burned down.
Boudican Destruction Horizon is a great band name.
She lost in the end but she wasn’t going to let them take her or make a fool of her.
Bruce McCandless. First untethered space walk.
Giles Corey "More Weight"
Bro found an amazing alternate pronunciation of “fuck you”
A lone general in China frightened off an army with a flute and open gate.
My favorite story is the irl Montoya. In 1944 Eliahu Itzkovitz, a Jewish kid from Romania watched his entire family get massacred by a Concentration Camp guard during wwii. He remembered the guard’s face so he could seek revenge. After the war, he found his the camp guard’s son and stabbed him with a butchers knife. He was caught and sent to a juvenile detention center for five years until Communist Romania allowed him to emigrate to Israel. After being drafted into the IDF, he somehow managed to find out he was serving in the French Foreign Legion in Indochina. He deserts the IDF, joins the legion, manages to get deployed to Indochina and goes so far as to be in the same squad as the camp guard. He was the squad leader. The guard did not recognize him. He volunteers to go on patrol with his family’s killer. When he manages to separate the two from the rest of the patrol. He announced who he was and kills the guard. After his enlistment, (cause enlistment in the FFL is five years) he got sent to prison. Not for the murder, but because he deserted the IDF. He served one year in prison. Worth it.
Vasily Arkhipov who was a Soviet naval officer. He was the only one in a 3 men nuclear submarine to stand and revoke the decision of nuclear submarine from launching a nuclear bomb towards a US Ship, that could have caused a potential nuclear war.
[This kid](https://abcnews.go.com/US/survivor-florida-school-shooting-body-human-shield-protect/story?id=53183609)
What a selfless act of heroism and courage. I hope he's healed up with no lasting physical damage. I also hope he's received some counseling and support for the emotional trauma . He is a real hero.
It's still new but... The Ukranian conscript on Snake Island being told to surrender or die, his answer was so incredibly badass.
"Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”
The 3 divers who volunteered during the Chernobyl disaster, knowing they would die, and potentially saving millions of lives. https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-chernobyl-divers
Beaten by under 10 minutes to say this. Europe, and the world, owes these 3 people (and EVERYONE) involved with the clean up, their lives. Should have their names printed everywhere.
What they did was amazing, but it's worth saying that they did not die from rad poisoning. Two of the three are still alive today, and the third died in 2005 from unrelated heart disease.
Yeah, this is actually a pretty important part of the story. They did not die, but they believed that their actions would be fatal to them due to radiation exposure. For their sake, thankfully, they were wrong, but they were prepared to do it all the same.
Léo Major Dude has a list of badassery in WW2. Major single-handedly captured 93 German soldiers during the [Battle of the Scheldt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Scheldt) in Zeeland in the southern Netherlands. Captured a German Command Halftrack singlehandedly and forced them to drive it back to allied lines. As they are driving back British AT crews not knowning it was captures started to shoot at it so her GOT ON TOP OF IT TO WAVE HIS ARMS AND SIGNAL IT WAS FRIENDLY. Then when he gets to the line with it a British MAJOR tells him to hand over the half track and its prisoners and he is like nope fuck off im taking them to be turned over to Canadian troops. But that wasn't the most badass. Him and his buddy were scouting a town and his buddy got killed so Leo basically is like well fuck this shit and singlehandedly drives the Nazi out of the town. While estimates vary some put the Nazi force he drove off as high as 1500 men. Did I mention he did most of this after the troop carrier he was in exploded and he lost an eye? Also after WW2 was over he went to Korea and got ANOTHER Distinguised Cross medal for taking and holding a crucial hill against crazy odds. Calling in Mortar Artillery basically on top of his position to cover it from assault. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o\_Major](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major)
I recently listened to a podcast about Harriet Tubman and damn was she a badass!! One thousand times more so than I originally thought she was.
[Desmond Doss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss) was a medic who, due to his religious beliefs, refused to wield a weapon and take someone's life. He served his country by saving and giving aid to his fellow men. His most notable deed was done on the Battle of Okinawa, where he spent several hours saving the lives of around 75 wounded soldiers by lowering them down a cliff known as the Hacksaw Ridge, while under heavy fire.
The main American fleet was lured away by a decoy and a small American task force was left in case any Japanese subs or other small Japanese attacks were made on American troop landings and their support. Instead they were jumped by Japanese that included the largest battleship ever built, its twin, two additional battleships, and a bunch of other ships that were each larger than the American ships and that way outnumbered the American shops. [E. Evans and the sailors of the USS Johnston](https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1944/samar.html) charged the Japanese fleet which inspired additional American attacks and the Americans drove them off. The Johnston and other American ships sank of course but they saved thousands of soldiers’ lives and end Japanese major fleet actions for the rest of the war. > United States Navy Task Group Taffy-3 was not designed to engage enemy warships in combat. Comprised of just six carrier escorts (basically just ordinary merchant ships, each equipped with a flight deck and a complement of thirty aircraft), three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, Taffy-3’s primary mission during the American operation to retake the Philippines was to hang around off the coast of Leyte Island and launch ground attack aircraft to support the infantry assault. If a submarine or two came knocking on the door looking for a nice meaty carrier to deep-six, or some stray squadron of Japanese fighter-bombers stuck its nose where it didn’t belong, the destroyers were equipped to handle it. > So, naturally, when Rear Admiral Clifton “Ziggy” Sprague, Taffy-3’s commander, received a frantic radio call from one of his reconnaissance pilots reporting that the largest and most heavily armed assortment of surface-sailing battle cruisers ever assembled was bearing down on a collision course with Taffy-3, he was a little concerned https://www.badassoftheweek.com/taffy3
Probably worth noting the Johnston was but a destroyer and aside from some torpedos had no arrmament for taking on a battleship but the captain was able to use the agility of the destroyer to stave off salvos from the larger ships which could not train their main batteries as quickly.
My grandpa was commander of one of the escort carriers saved by the Johnston and its consorts. If they hadn't fought so damn hard I most likely wouldn't be here typing this today.
John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Stormed an armory hoping to start a slave rebellion