19 People Who Rolled Up Their Sleeves and Singlehandedly Changed History

‘Isaac Newton ran out of math to work with and was like ‘I guess I'll just invent Calculus’’
19 People Who Rolled Up Their Sleeves and Singlehandedly Changed History

Everyone's experienced a situation when no one else was willing to step up and do what needed to be done. For most of us, it was probably fairly inconsequential, like a spouse not keeping up their fair share of the housework or an office full of people eager to test the bystander effect as it relates to refilling the coffee pot. That's not to say it didn't feel like a heroic achievement, but it was likely quickly forgotten, including by you.

Some people, however, have found themselves tasked with singlehandedly altering the course of history. They invented world-changing technology, turned themselves into human guinea pigs, or won entire wars all by themselves, all because they were the only ones willing to do it. That's why u/throwaway121270 asked r/AskReddit, had to know who else was out there like them.

 6y ago o Edited 6y ago 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 со- owns the Washington redskins...the latter often viewed as the biggest failure in his life.
ItsUrPalAI . 6y ago 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
Jonyb222 . 6y ago Léo Major, he liberated an entire village from Nazis by himself, he's one of the handful of super badass soldiers you sometimes hear about from WW2
pyrangarlit - 6y ago . Edited 6y ago 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. Не broke it. They arrested him for vandalism and held him until the outbreak suddenly ended...
flamebroiledhodor . 6y ago 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).
livaitte 6y ago 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.
NotDaveBut 6y ago 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
utm99 6y ago Edited 6y ago 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. Не loved her alot. Не 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. Не did
mrbibs350 6y ago e Edited 6y ago Maurice Hilleman invented over 40 vaccines during his career in the pharmaceutical industry. In 1963 his oldest daughter caught the mumps. Не 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.
 6y ago 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.
nova3482 6y ago e Edited 6y ago In 1888, Almon Brown Strowger, an undertaker, noticed he was losing a lot of business to the other undertaker in town. Не 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.
Scooby_Dooby-Dont 6y ago Edited 6y ago 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
 6y ago 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
burntwenis 6y ago Edited 6y ago 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 drugs they held in case of injury or tiredness, one of which was pervitin (which was literal meth in a tablet form). instead of just taking one or two, he downed the whole bottle and went on a weeks-long methed up rampage. he got hit by a landmine,
 6y ago 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
YetAnotherAchiever 6y ago Martine Rothblatt (founder of Sirius ХМ 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
brucejoel99 6y ago 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-fascist Spanish official & got himself recruited by the Nazis, 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.
ChaosTitanium 6y ago e Edited 6y ago A man who was a tractor mechanic conpany owner made a good chunk of money and bought a Ferrari. Не 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.
 . 6y ago George Clooney. Bought his own spy satellite to prove the alleged crimes of an African warlords because nobody else would.

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