History is often made by people who seize the day and take matters into their own hands rather than wait for someone else to take action. In the end, the future doesn’t remember just any Tom, Dick or Harry, does it?
These people, on the other hand, said enough is enough and just took charge boldly. Of course, they ended up being in our history books as their actions had a massive impact on almost the whole world. We have compiled the best ones for you, so just scroll down to check them out for yourself!
More info: Reddit
#1
Maurice Hilleman invented over 40 vaccines during his career in the pharmaceutical industry.
In 1963 his oldest daughter caught the mumps. He cultured a sample from her, developed a vaccine, and injected it into his younger daughter.
That vaccine is still in use and has saved millions of lives.
In total, it’s estimated that his work has saved 118 million lives globally.
Image source: mrbibs350, Getty Images
#2
In 1888, Almon Brown Strowger, an undertaker, noticed he was losing a lot of business to the other undertaker in town. He found out that the other undertaker’s wife was a telephone operator and when she intercepted people asking to be connected to Strowger’s funeral home, the operator would route the call to her husband’s funeral home instead.
Three years later, Strowger patented the automatic teller exchange, a system which allowed telephone users to make calls without the need for human operators, singlehandedly destroying an entire workforce.
Image source: nova3482, jamica1
#3
James Clerk Maxwell was idolised by Einstein as being the father of modern physics. Not only did he formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation but just for s***s and giggles he calculated exactly what Saturns rings were made from using pure mathematics. It wasn’t until Voyager 1 and 2 passed by and took photos in the early 80s did we get confirmation that Maxwell was right.
He then calculated how to take a colour photograph in 1855. This was then achieved in 1861 and is recognized as the first ever colour photograph.
Image source: Ohmsy, dun_deagh
#4
Martine Rothblatt (founder of Sirius XM and unbelievable polymath), was told her daughter Jenesis had 3 months to live. She had been diagnosed with a type of pulmonary arterial hypertension which was fatal.
The disease causes too much pressure in the blood vessels leading from the heart to the lungs, causing them to narrow and not carry enough oxygen.
So Rothblatt quit all of her other work and went to the library to save her daughter. Even though she had zero background in the field, she figured out a cure and in the process founded United Therapeutics which is a billion dollar biotechnology company.
Rothblatt’s life story is amazing.
Image source: YetAnotherAchiever, Maryland GovPics
#5
John Snow (not that one, the father of epidemiology). No one believed him that the Cholera outbreak in what is now Soho was because of a contaminated water pump. He broke it. They arrested him for vandalism and held him until the outbreak suddenly ended…
Edit: corrected the location.
Image source: pyrangarlit, Thomas Jones Barker
#6
Clara Lemlich taking the stage at a union meeting in 1909 to declare a general strike after the (older, male) union leaders told the working girls that there really wasn’t a point in striking and it would be too hard, just be patient and deal with it. So 20 year Old Clara interrupts them, climbs up on the stage, and shouts at the crowd that she’s tired of just talk, time to strike. and everyone went for it, instant agreement of the workers.
wow, this got some attention, so editing to add that I dug up my old research: a translation of what she said, originally in Yiddish, was “I have listened to all the speeches and I have no further patience for talk. I, too, have worked and suffered, and I am tired of talk. I move that we go on general strike. Now!”.
Image source: Hedgiwithapen, Maayan Nemanov
#7
Otis invented pretty much what we consider the modern elevator.
Nobody was convinced it was safe so he hoisted himself up extremely high and had somebody cut the cable with an axe to prove how confident he was that the elevator was safe regardless of almost worst case scenarios.
Image source: Iivaitte, Derrick Treadwell
#8
In 1947 a guy named Thor Heyerdahl was trying to prove his theory that the Polynesian islands were settled by people from South America, not Asia. Nobody believed him because it was thought that crossing such a large ocean with the technology they had back then was impossible.
So he decides to build a boat using only the tools and materials available at the time these migrations took place. And then he sailed that boat across the Pacific Ocean, nearly dying in the process, but ultimately making it to the Polynesian islands.
#9
The doctor stationed in Antarctica that removed his own appendix. G*****n.
Image source: Haploid-life, Cassie Matias
#10
A man who was a tractor mechanic conpany owner made a good chunk of money and bought a Ferrari. He felt that the car wasn’t as good as it could be, and it wasn’t very comfortable, so he brought his complaints all the way to Enzo Ferrari, the owner of the company. Enzo insulted the man, saying a mere tractor mechanic didn’t know how to make a sports car. That sparked a rivalry that lasts to this day. That man was Ferruccio Lamborghini.
Edit: Thanks to u/TDS755 and u/KINGChameleon07 for correcting me.
Image source: ChaosTitanium, TKOIII
#11
Brian Acton interviewed at Facebook and got turned down. He said f**k it and built Whatsapp. Several years later, Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19B
Edit: Here is his tweet from 2009 the day he interviewed. I’m getting this framed for my desk at work.
Image source: gaenji, StartXVideos
#12
Cliff Stoll (The Cuckoos Egg) noticed weird traffic on his university servers. No one believed him that there was any risk occurring. Ended up uncovering a major hacking attempt to steal missile designs and basically created internet security. (I think it was missile designs, it’s been a long time).
Image source: flamebroiledhodor, heipei
#13
Not a very old story. Manjhi or the mountain man lived in a very remote village of India whose route to nearby was blocked a mountain and hence villagers had to climb it every time. And they had to do that daily to get essential supplies. During one of these trips, his wife fell down the mountain. He loved her alot. He tried first to persuade the govt to do a mountain tunnel project there but to vain. So he went on alone to break the entire mountain with just an axe. He did that for 10+ years and finally suceeded.
There is a bollywood movie on him too(title:Maanjhi: The mountain man).
Image source: utm99, Sumita Roy Dutta
#14
Léo Major, he liberated an entire village from N**is by himself, he’s one of the handful of super badass soldiers you sometimes hear about from WW2.
Image source: Jonyb222, Bernard Gagnon
#15
Let’s not forget that Isaac Newton ran out of math to work with and was like “I guess I’ll just invent Calculus then”.
Image source: ItsUrPalAl, Godfrey Kneller
#16
It’s gotta be Aimo Koivunen- he was a finnish soldier in the second world war when the finns were trying to reclaim land from the soviets. he got separated from his unit mid-war in the middle of nowhere- he was the one tasked to carry the d***s they held in case of injury or tiredness, one of which was pervitin (which was literal m**h in a tablet form). instead of just taking one or two, he downed the whole bottle and went on a weeks-long m**hed up rampage. he got hit by a landmine, evaded soviet soldiers, caught a bird and ate it raw, all while on skis. he finally made it back to finnish lines where on arrival, he weighed only 90 pounds or so and had a heartrate of 200 beats per minute. he ended up living for another 45 years.
Image source: burntwenis, all_thats_interesting
#17
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Catherine the Great of Russia. She decided her husband was useless (which, granted, he was) and proceeded to set up a military coup to overthrow him. Even with the plan being discovered early, she dressed herself in military garb and marched with her new army, which had just sworn loyalty to her, down to Peter’s palace, where he was forced to resign the throne, all without a single drop of blood shed. At least until Peter turned up dead some time later under shady circumstances but honestly for a military coup it was pretty non violent.
If saying “F**k it, I’m ruling Russia myself” isn’t great, I dunno what is. I mean, it’s right there next to her name for a reason.
Image source: anon, Alexander Roslin
#18
George Clooney.
Bought his own spy satellite to prove the alleged crimes of an African warlords because nobody else would.
Image source: anon, Michael Vlasaty
#19
Juan Pujol García was a Spaniard who created his own counter-intelligence operation for the Allies during WW2. Initially, he approached British & American intelligence to offer them his services, but both countries rebuffed him. Undeterred, García created a fictional persona as a pro-f*****t Spanish official & got himself recruited by the N**is, who directed him to travel to Britain to recruit agents. Instead, García created a network of fictitious agents & sub-agents using publicly available information like newspapers & travel brochures. It was at this point that he again contacted Allied intelligence, & he was finally recruited. García continued his work throughout the war, & for the same operation, he received both a knighthood from the British & the Iron Cross from N**i Germany. The N**is never realized that he was a double-agent.
Image source: brucejoel99, Government of Venezuela
#20
Probably the time Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa decided they couldn’t wait around any longer and legged it for 10 days across the Andes with no warm clothes, climbing gear, or food except some scraps of their dead friends stuffed into a sock. They finally found someone out in the middle of nowhere, Sergio Catalan, who rode horseback all night and then took a bus to get some help. The mountain climbers had come from the wreckage of a crashed plane that everyone had been looking for for over 2 mos. They needed help for the other survivors who were injured and starving. They saved 14 of their friends.
Image source: NotDaveBut, ABC News
#21
When Nintendo turned down a collab with Sony.
Then Sony said, “F**k it, we’ll do it ourself”. The rest is history.
Image source: Vallarta21, CARTIST
#22
Desmond Doss. Single handedly saved from 50 to 100 men up on hacksaw ridge in Okinawa. His company was ordered to retreat when they were attacked by the Japanese but instead he said “nah,” stayed up on the ridge alone, unarmed, and dragged as many soldiers as he could to safety without any help. Even when he was shot by a sniper and riddled with shrapnel, he made sure they took another guy down the hillside before him.
Edit: I’m aware there is a movie. I’ve read about him before and I know he’s done more than just what is in the movie. I just didn’t want to make a 3000 word post about the many ways this guy is amazing.
Image source: Scooby_Dooby-Dont, US Federal Government
#23
Metallica fired Dave Mustaine (1983) because he was sort of a control freak and wanted to take the band in a more prog/jazz metal direction. He was also using d***s and was known for violent behavior at the time. He went off and created his own band Megadeth and over the next 30+ years he’s sold millions of albums and toured the whole world writing and controlling pretty much everything he’s ever wanted. It seems they’ve all now patched things up. Dude is an absolute genius beast of a guitarist/songwriter.
Also, when guitarist Hillel Slovak died (1988), John Frusciante was a 19yr old kid and a huge fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was heartbroken and didn’t want to see the end of his favorite band. So he went and auditioned to play lead guitar. He got the gig. Helped take them to the top of the charts. The rest is history, today he’s considered one of the greatest rock guitarists out there.
Image source: anon, Tudor Iodăchescu
#24
Donald Knuth is one of the big names in computer science. Back in the 1960s he set out to write the definitive texts on computer programming and analysis of algorithms. The first three volumes came out and he started the fourth in the early/mid 1970s. He was unhappy with how the newer printing/editions were typeset and so he took a summer to “solve” that problem.
A decade later the fourth volume still had not been completed, but as a consolation prize we got TeX (later extended to the more commonly used LaTeX), without question the most comprehensive and powerful language for creating documents with heavy technical requirements; it is a strange mix of a markup language like HTML and a compiled language like C. It is completely free and has been for well over 30 years and is probably the most bug-free piece of software I’ve ever seen. Certainly for its size and scope, there’s not much out there of comparable quality.
There is literally no mathematics that cannot be properly typeset in TeX/LaTeX. Its default style is instantly recognizable to any working mathematician. It is used across nearly all STEM fields and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of journals that *only* accept manuscripts written in LaTeX.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that drafts of the fourth volume started to appear. Nobody has seemed to mind.
Image source: shellexyz, Alex Handy
#25
During the American revolution, John Paul Jones sailed over to England to burn down British naval ships. He succeeded of course, and made back safely. After the revolution he was even pardoned by the town that he burned most of the ships in.
Image source: ImANerd12, Charles Willson Peale
#26
The guy who started fedex wrote a college paper about a nationwide overnight shipping company, and got a C…started the company anyways.
Later after he started it and it was struggling, he couldn’t get a loan and the company was almost bankrupt, and he bet next weeks payroll at the casino on roulette and won.
Also got a silver star in the Vietnam war and now co-owns the Washington redskins…the latter often viewed as the biggest failure in his life.
Image source: anon, Tia Dufour
#27
Alexander the Great solving the Gordian knot by cutting it with his sword.
Image source: Choppergold, Jean-Simon Berthélemy
#28
Henry VIII. Couldn’t get his way with the pope, so made he made the Church of England so he could do what he wanted.
Image source: Scicst, Joos van Cleve
#29
The giant Norse Axeman who held the chokepoint at The Battle of Stamford Bridge:
“By the time the bulk of the English army had arrived, the Vikings on the west side were either slain or fleeing across the bridge. The English advance was then delayed by the need to pass through the choke-point presented by the bridge itself. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has it that a giant Norse axeman (possibly armed with a Dane Axe) blocked the narrow crossing and single-handedly held up the entire English army. The story is that this axeman cut down up to 40 Englishmen and was defeated only when an English soldier floated under the bridge in a half-barrel and thrust his spear through the planks in the bridge, mortally wounding the axeman.[15]”
Image source: anon, Peter Nicolai Arbo
#30
When Julius Caeser decided to just up and f*****g march into Rome to declare himself the military leader.
Image source: Majike03, Barry Marsh
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