13 The most successful pirate in history was a Chinese prostitute. Cheng I Sao commanded 80,000 sailors and a fleet bigger than most of the country’s navies, which was why the government had to give up and offer her a truce. She retired with her loot and opened a gambling house before passing away peacefully.

Cheng, a Chinese pirate, married a prostitute in 1801. She married him on the condition that she would share equally in his power and would be given the opportunity to amass more wealth for him. They worked together for six years and when Cheng passed away, Cheng I Sao took up the reigns, and knowing the pirate masses won’t follow the command of a woman, she appointed her husband’s second-in-command, Chang Pao, as official captain of the fleet.

Cheng I Sao was responsible for business and military strategy, established a pirate code, and governed the growing body of pirates as she increased their numbers. She repelled every attack from the Chinese navy, until they changed tactics and offered a universal amnesty for pirates in exchange for peace.(source)

14 There was a Mongolian princess, Khutulun, who insisted that any man who wished to marry her must defeat her in wrestling and surrender their horses if they lost. She won 10,000 horses by defeating prospective suitors. 

Born in 1260, Khutulun was the daughter of the most powerful ruler of Central Asia, Kaidu. She assisted her father in many battles, especially against the Yuan Dynasty of her cousin, Great Khan. Of all Kaidu’s children, Khutulun was his favorite and he would seek her advice and political support, and tried to name her as the successor to the khanate before he died. However, it was declined by her brothers and male relatives who often challenged her. Even Marco Polo described her as a superb warrior who would ride into the enemy ranks and snatch a captive like a hawk would catch a chicken.(source)

15 In 1823, the American fur trapper Hugh Glass was attacked by a grisly bear which he killed by stabbing repeatedly with his knife 200 miles from nearest settlement. He treated his wounds by letting maggots eat infected flesh to prevent gangrene, set his broken leg, crawled to a river to make a raft so that he could float downstream and reach Fort Kiowa. The whole journey took him 6 weeks.

While scouting for game, Glass surprised and disturbed a grizzly bear with two cubs and was immediately attacked by it. He was badly mauled and received severe wounds, but was able to kill it with the help of his trapping partners. When Glass lost his conscious, his partners agreed that two of them were to stay there until he died and to bury him. But, when they were attacked by a tribe, the two fled leaving Glass without any weapons or equipment. When he woke up, he found himself abandoned with festering wounds, deep cuts on his back that exposed his ribs. In spite of everything that happened, he persisted and was able to make it to the nearest settlement.(source)

16 In 1933, five acquaintances of a homeless alcoholic, Michael Malloy, plotted to take three life insurance policies on him and then get him to drink himself to death. When it did not kill him, they substituted antifreeze for liquor, then turpentine, horse liniment, and finally mixed rat poison in the alcohol. Then, they tried poisoned oysters and sardines, and none of which killed him. After several more attempts, the gang finally succeeded by putting a hose in his mouth and releasing gas jet.

And that wasn’t all that he survived. When they understood it was not likely that anything Malloy ingested was going to kill him, the five conspirators, who later came to be called the Murder Trust, decided to freeze him to death. After Malloy drank until he passed out on a night that reached -14⁰F  temperature, they carried him to a park, and poured five gallons of water on his bare chest. The next day he came back for his drink.

They next hit him with a taxi travelling at 45 miles per hour, which just broke his bones and he was out of hospital soon. When he again appeared in the bar, they made their last attempt which succeeded. However, the rumors soon floated about it to the police who promptly exhumed and forensically examined the body. The five were found guilty with four of them executed on electric chair.(source)

17 During the Vietnam War in 1968, a US Army Captain, Hugh Thompson, noticed a large number of dead bodies of unarmed villagers, including children. He flew in his helicopter between the soldiers firing and civilians in order to stop the soldiers from killing further. He made a report of the killings after the massacre. But, he was criticized by congressmen and many Americans for this, and received many death threats and dead animals on his porch due to his testimony against US soldiers. 

The My Lai massacre was considered “the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War”. Hugh Thompson’s intervention was denounced by several US Congressmen and he and two other servicemen who tried to halt the massacre were called traitors . The exposing of the massacre contributed to the domestic opposition of the involvement US in Vietnam War. The efforts of Thompson and the two other men were only recognized and decorated after thirty years, one posthumously, by the US Army for shielding civilians from war-zone.(1, 2)

18 During the final manned mission of Project Mercury, the automatically controlled spacecraft Faith 7 had power failure and forced astronaut Gordon Cooper to take manual control. He used his knowledge of stars and his wristwatch, eyeballed the attitude with lines drawn on his window, and landed just 4 miles from his recovery ship in Pacific Ocean.

All Mercury flights were designed to be fully automatic, including Flight 7, which was piloted by Gordon Cooper. The automation was considered a controversial engineering decision, which reduced the role of an astronaut to a mere passenger. Because of it, these flights were called “spam in the can” by Chuck Yeager, a well-known test pilot who was the first to break speed of sound in flight. Towards the end of the mission, Flight 7 developed technical problems and had power failure. However, the mission was saved by Cooper’s expert piloting.(1, 2)