21 People Who Took History Into Their Own Hands

‘Henry VIII’
21 People Who Took History Into Their Own Hands

History is often less about one brilliant/brave/well-endowed man than we like to think. It’s really hard to accomplish world-changing feats without a good team or even a whole army in place, but it’s easier to tell stories about one guy, so we tend to just identify one to pin it on and call it a day. Have you ever seen a movie shot from the perspective of more than, like, five characters? Shit would be a nightmare.

Still, there were times in history when someone had to say, “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.” Whether they were holding off invading forces when no one else was available to do so or developing groundbreaking medical treatments that the man (ethics boards and grant givers) won’t touch, when user EmergencyPsychology5 asked r/AskReddit, “What is the greatest ‘fuck it, I’ll do it myself’ moment in history?” Reddit enlightened us about the path of the solitary spearhead.

 2mo ago The Viking who single-handedly delayed the advancing Saxon Army on Stamford Bridge in 1066
WorldProtagonist 2mo ago Léo Major capturing an entire town on his own in WW2 has to be up there.
_vOjOs_ 2mo ago Henry VIII. Creating his own church and divorcing his wife after the pope's forbidden it.
Groundskeepr 2mo ago Linus Torvalds and the birth of Git. Don't change license terms for software Linus relies on; he will write you out of business.
AudibleNod 2mo ago Dr Barry Marshall for infecting himself with H. pylori to prove they were the cause of ulcers. Не earned a Nobel prize for his efforts.
emilyashford22 2mo ago Dr Tracy Dixon-Salazar who went and got her PhD in neurobiology because her daughter was having seizures and nobody could tell her why this was happening and nobody could treat her daughter. She found a treatment when nobody else could. Incredible woman.
Hirmuinen6 2mo ago John Stapp: air force doctor who was convinced that more pilots could survive if their seats didnt disintegrate on crash landings. Не proved it by strapping himself into a mythbusters style rocket sled and not dying. His work led to safer planes and cars.
Lugbor 2mo ago The man who invented the automatic switchboard (switchboards used to require a person to physically move a cable to connect the call) did so because his funeral home wasn't getting any customers. The lady operating the switchboard was the wife of his rival and was redirecting the calls to her husband. Instead of complaining to the phone company, which would have probably gotten her fired if they found sufficient evidence, he took matters into his own hands and made her entire job obsolete.
-SnarkBlac- 2mo ago Hannibal crossing the Alps to take on the Romans and then subsequently annihilating multiple Roman armies and rampaging through Italy for nearly a decade has to be up there somewhere. It's a shame the rest of Carthage lost on its other fronts.
bananaphonepajamas 2mo ago Edited 2mo ago Maybe not the greatest, but hilarious enough I'd put it fairly high: Lieutenant Speirs' run through Foy in Band of Brothers is apparently true. Can't get orders to the other side of the city? Alright, let me just run right through the German occupied town and back.
 2mo ago Ferrucio Lamborghini made agriculture tractors. Не bought a ferrari and complained about the quality to the owner of Ferrari, Enzo. Не was basically told to piss off so Ferrucio started manufacturing his own cars as well, now known as Lamborghini
poluting 2mo ago Edited 2mo ago North Korea attempted to hack someone who use to do cybersecurity for the Department of Defense in an attempt to steal some of his hacking software. Не notified the FBI and after waiting a year for nothing to come of it, he decided to hack into servers and routers of North Korea and effectively took down their internet as well as virtually all of their sites for many days.
EIToro_74 2mo ago Edited 2mo ago John von Neumann was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. However, he kept being frustrated by the physicists never being able to build a properly working computer to do his calculations. So in 1945 he basically said 'fuck it, just do this' and described the architecture which is basically the foundation of all modern computers. Which is referred to as 'von Neumann architecture'.
Confusionitus 2mo ago Edited 2mo ago General Vladimir Pikalov. Didn't want his men exposed to radiation during the Chernobyl disaster, so he personally drove around the perimeter of the power plant to get exact radiation levels and exposing himself to 137 rems. A lot of people think that this was just a part of the show, but this man really made a necessary sacrifice and should be acknowledged as a hero.
electriclarryland91 2mo ago Wikipedia passage about the US soldier Audie Murphy at the Colmar Pocket in WWII: The Germans scored a direct hit on an M10 tank destroyer, setting it alight, forcing the crew to abandon it.  Murphy ordered his men to retreat to positions in the woods, remaining alone at his post, shooting his M1 carbine and directing artillery fire via his field radio while the Germans aimed fire directly at his position.  Murphy mounted the abandoned, burning tank destroyer and began firing its .50 caliber machine gun at the advancing Germans, killing a squad crawling through
Malvania 2mo ago Edited 2mo ago Benedict Arnold. Horatio Gates was useless at the Battle of Saratoga, and the two men hated each other. Halfway through the battle, Gates relieved Arnold of his command. Seeing that the American counterattack was stalled, Arnold rode out and rallied the troops from the front, saving the day and directly leading to the British surrender. In the process, he was shot in his left leg, which was then crushed as his horse was also shot out from under him. When Gates' messenger finally arrived to order him to return back to headquarters, Arnold had
sumyungdood 2mo ago Edited 2mo ago John Walsh's son was abducted from a Sears in 1981 and his decapitated head was found two weeks later. The rest of his body was never found. They were never able to pin the murder on anyone. John Walsh got involved in victim advocacy and started Americas Most Wanted, helping capture more than 1000 criminals, some of which were on the FBIs most wanted list. It was eventually determined (with minimal evidence) that a serial killer named Ottis Toole was Adam's killer. To this day, department stores commonly have a code Adam, named after
hiro111 2mo ago Famous writer Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach etc) developed and patented a surgical device to treat children with traumatic brain injuries. Dahl had no medical training, he just did it. Dahl's 4 year old son was injured in a car accident and developed dangerous pressure on his brain due to swelling. Surgeons installed a shunt in Dahl's son's skull to drain fluid and relieve pressure, but it kept clogging. There was no better solution on the market so Dahl worked with a toy maker to design a new
digiorno 2mo ago Newton inventing calculus. Не was trying to solve problems that were unsolvable or very tedious to solve. Instead of trying to solve them with the help of his peers, he simply invented a new branch of mathematics to solve them. And then he basically discarded his invention after he achieved his goal because he moved on to other problems. Later there were rumblings about a new way to solve problems and he's like, oh yeah I did that years ago, it's in some of my journals over there.
jonschaff 2mo ago Julius Caesar pretty much lived by that code. Probably the best example was during the civil war, when no one was brave enough to break into the temple and loot the national treasury for their various faction. Caesar himself marched up to the temple doors, threatened to kill the temple guard, and started to bag the gold himself.
n00by97 2mo ago In 1959, Dashrath Manjhi's wife died from injuries resulting from trying to cross the mountain to access the closest hospital. There was no road so he--over the course of over two decades with a hammer and chisel-- moved the f*ckin' mountain! His country (India) made a postage stamp with the madlad's face on it. Dude swore vengeance on a damn mountain and won!

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