Some Lesser Known Badasses From History

1.

Simo Hayha. Finnish farmer. Got drafted. Killed 505 Russians in the Winter War, making him the deadliest sniper ever. Didn't use a scope. He also killed 200 more with his machine gun

2.

I'm gonna go with Chinese pirate queen Ching Shih. Started as a prostitute, ended as the leader of a fleet of 300 ships and 20'000 to 40'000 pirates.

3.

Mary E. Walker - doctor, and first and only woman to have the Congressional Medal of Honor from actions in the US Civil War.She was the daughter of active abolitionists and the only woman to graduate with a medical degree when she attended Syracuse Hospital (and one of the first). When she was refused from medical military service, she started treating the wounded who were dragging themselves home. She eventually was allowed in the military in 1863 as an assistant surgeon.

The infantry she served with (Ohio 52nd) had lower casualty rates. Attended battle-ground wounded and crossed enemy lines to attend women and children and civilians injured. She was captured by the Confederates in 1864. She treated her fellow POWs while held, refusing to dress or 'act' like a lady.She then worked in Tennessee at a woman’s and orphan asylum through outbreaks of tuberculosis, fever.

The hospital records of her service do not name her work, in favor of her male supervisors, but a medical award now is given in her name. Also campaigned, with risk of imprisonment, for women's right to vote. Respect for her service kept her from arrest.

4.

Ben L. Salomon. He was a front line surgeon in WW2. During the battle of Saipan he was in a surgical tent helping wounded soldiers, when he noticed a Japanese soldier bayoneting one of the injured men. He shot the Japanese soldier and then quickly dispatched several other Japanese soldiers who came into the tent. He then took control of a mounted machine gun and went to town. When they found his body, he was shot and stabbed 24 times and had killed 98 Japanese soldiers. He repositioned the machine gun 4 times due to him not being able to shoot over the mountains of bodies. He was given the Medal of Honor in 2002.

5.

Hugh Glass: While on a fur trapping expedition, Hugh was attacked and mauled by a grizzly bear. He was able to kill the giant bear with some help, then passed out. His group left him thinking he would never survive the wounds or the journey which was 200 miles away from the nearest town. Glass regained consciousness only to find himself abandoned, without weapons or equipment. He was suffering from a broken leg, the cuts on his back were exposing bare ribs, and all his wounds were festering. So he cleaned his wounds with maggots, made a boat, fought off wolves and 6 weeks later made it back to civilization, crawling a large portion of the way.

6.

Miyamoto Musashi. He was undefeated in the 60 duels he fought, and he won one of them with a wooden sword.

7.

Diogenes - a homeless Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel and m*sturbated in public. He also had an epic encounter with Alexander the Great. Wile Diogenes was relaxing in the sunlight in the morning, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favor he might do for him. Diogenes replied, "Yes, stand out of my sunlight". Alexander then declared, "If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes", to which Diogenes replied, "If I were not Diogenes, I should also wish to be Diogenes. In another account of the conversation, Alexander found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave."

8.

There is no way Stanislav Petrov isn't the most badass person ever. On September 26, 1983, Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov was in command at Serpukhov-15, a bunker where the Soviets monitored their satellite-based detection systems. Shortly after midnight, panic broke out when an alarm sounded signaling that the United States had fired five Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, toward Russia. The warning was a false alarm—one of the satellites had misinterpreted the glint of sunlight off clouds near Montana as a missile launch—but to the Soviets, it appeared the United States had started a nuclear war.

Protocol demanded that Serpukhov-15 report any signs of a missile launch to the Soviet high command, but Petrov had a hunch the warning was an error. He knew the new satellite system was mistake-prone, and he also reasoned that any nuclear strike by the Americans would come in the form of hundreds of missiles, not just five. With only minutes to make a decision, Petrov chose to ignore the blaring warning alarms and reported the launch as a false alarm—a move that may have averted a nuclear holocaust. The incident remained classified until after the Cold War ended, but Petrov later received several humanitarian awards for his extraordinary actions, and was even honored by the United Nations.

9.

Michael Malloy. Malloy was a homeless alcoholic man. Five men took out life insurance policies on him and tried to get him to drink himself to death by giving him unlimited credit at a bar that one of them owned (so that they could collect the money from the insurance company). This wasn't working fast enough, so they started putting anti-freeze in his drink... then turpentine, then horse tranquilizer, and finally rat poison.

None of them killed Malloy. The men then tried feeding him raw oysters with wood alcohol and poisoned, spoiled sardine sandwiches (filled with carpet nails). Again, none of this worked, so they waited for him to pass out drunk one night, then dragged his body out into the -26 °C night and left him there to sleep (pouring 20 liter of water on him for good measure). The next day, Malloy came into the bar and ordered another drink.

The group then ran him over with a car at 70km/h. This hospitalized him for a few weeks, but again, didn't kill him. Eventually they succeeded by putting a gas pipe down his throat (after he passed out drunk of course) and pumping gas into him for an hour. The group were later convicted of murder (due, in no small part, to the fame of Malloy's durability), with four of them receiving the death penalty.

10.

Julie d'Aubigny. She was the bisexual daughter of Louis XIV's Master of the Horse. She was trained in swordsmanship and horsemanship. She ran away with her boyfriend, to live as exhibition duelists, drinking and fighting their way across France. Until she got bored. At which point she hooked up with a nobleman's daughter. When the nobleman found out, he did what you do with misbehaving daughters, in the 18th century: place them in a convent. A convent that Julie then joined to have hot, sexy, illicit lesbian nun sex.

They then escaped the convent together, that Julie burned the f**k down, because Julie d'Aubigny gives zero f**s. Her girlfriend, understandably freaked out, ran back to her parents, who had Julie convicted of kidnapping in absentia. The King pardoned her, she had an illustrious career at the French Opera, sexing up noblemen's wives and fighting duels. She died at 33, after living the most James Bond life I can ever imagine anyone living, ever.

11.

Alexander the Great. A man so badass that he conquered so much land that by the time he got to India his own generals had to convince him to go back home since he'd been on campaign for so long his men missed their families. He reigned for 13 years and died at the ripe old age of 33, having conquered his way from Greece to India, taking Egypt along for the ride.

He was also almost certainly bisexual, was thought to have been the child of Zeus and was tutored by Aristotle. He was of course a military genius and undefeated in battle. Physical looks aside, as he was stocky and somewhat short, his entire life reads like the sort of character you'd read about in a story and think he was total Mary Sue. If he hadn't died at 33 he probably would have conquered most of the known world.

12.

Mad Jack Churchill. He was a lieutenant in WWII who marched into battle with bagpipes, a longbow, and a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword. He firmly believed that any officer who entered battle without his sword was improperly dressed, and holds the most recent confirmed kill with a longbow. He also disliked the Americans joining the war, because without them, the war could have gone on for 10 more years.

13.

Xiahou Dun, a 2nd-century Chinese warrior who got his eye shot with an arrow and *f*****g ate it* before cleaving the dude who shot him in two.

14.

Lady Trieu Thi Trinh. She was a warrior-queen who decided to lead the people against the Chinese imperial rule over Northern Vietnam at that time. The Chinese governor at that time was so afraid of her that even after her death he still had thousands of wooden penises hanging around his house to scare her away.