Throughout history there have been people that you shouldn’t really mess with. In no particular order, here are some of our favorites.
Samuel Whittemore
Sam is the oldest documented combatant in the American War of Independence. At the age of 80, he had already served as an officer in the British Army. A veteran of King’s George’s War as well as the French and Indian Wars, Sam retired to his farm.
On April 19, 1776, Sam spotted a British brigade marching back to Boston. With the odds at about 4000 to one, Sam grabbed his weapons and attacked. From behind a stone wall he killed a soldier with his first shot. Drawing his pistols, he killed two more. He then began trading shots with a detachment sent to deal with him. He had fired five times when the soldiers closed on him. Drawing his sword, Sam attacked. It was then that he was shot in the head. Repeatedly beaten and bayoneted thirteen times, he was left for dead in a pool of blood.
Instead of dying, he was found later trying to load his weapons. He recovered from his wounds and lived to the age of 98.
In 2005, Samuel Whittemore was named the State Hero of Massachusetts.
George Washington
At 6 foot, 3 inches and weighing 200 pounds, Washington could have been a line backer in the NFL. During the French and Indian War, Washington was known to the natives of Quebec as “The Destroyer of Cities”. He traded blankets infected with small pox to the Indians. This wiped out 50% of the population. In 1781, 200 New Jersey men of the Continental Army mutinied and deserted. Washington had them quickly rounded up. The ring leaders were separated and three names were drawn by lot. Washington then ordered their execution. He further ordered that the remaining ring leaders form the firing squad and shoot their friends. Washington had bursts of anger where aides and by standers could well be smacked around. Definitely bi-polar, he calmed down as fast as he fired up. His nickname among the troops was “Leonidas”. Look it up. He once wrote that “Discipline is the soul of an army.” At Valley Forge he issued orders that threatened to court martial (and execute) any officer who was caught relieving themselves anywhere but in the Latrine. That’s right. In Washington’s command you could be shot for pissing. George preferred small unit actions in battle. He also liked his opponents to be asleep when he attacked. When he made his famous crossing of the Delaware River, the crossing was followed up by a 10 mile march through snow. Some of his men had no shoes for this. He attacked the sleeping British garrison. The British commander had spent the previous night drinking and celebrating Christmas. He surrendered to Washington while still holding up his pants. In his pockets he had an unread message warning him about Washington impending attack.
Leonid Rogozov
Onn April 29, 1961 a doctor of the 6th Soviet Antarctic expedition, Leonid Rogozov aged 27 felt pain in a right lower belly and fever. The next day brought only exasperation. Having no chance to call a plane and being the only doctor at the station “Novolazarevskaya”, at night, on April, 30th the surgeon removed his own appendix using local anesthesia. He was assisted by an engineer and the station’s meteorologist.
Buford Pusser
McNairy County, Tennessee had an organized crime problem in 0s and Sheriff Buford Pusser had an idea to solve it: he got a 4×4, carved it into a club, and used it beat the living crap out of criminals. He jailed 7,500 criminals over 6 years by targeting illegal gambling dens, prostitution rings, and moonshine stills. Even after they killed his wife, shot him 8 times, and stabbed him 7 times he kept beating the living crap out of organized crime. He once jumped onto a the hood of a car that tried to run him over, smashed the window, and beat the crap out of the driver.
Andrew Jackson
The 7th President of the United States, spent more time fighting anyone who angered him than he spent leading the nation. The only president to ever beat up his own would-be assassin, he spent most of his time going to bizarre lengths to protect the honor of his beloved wife, Rachel Jackson. Andrew married Rachel before the ink was dry on her previous marriage’s divorce papers, and he decided to solve the problem by dueling anyone that called her a whore. His most famous duel involved Charles Dickinson, a famous duelist with 26 kills under his belt, after Jackson’s rivals pushed Dickinson into insulting Rachel. Jackson let Dickinson shoot him in the chest during the ensuing duel. As Dickinson reloaded, Jackson carefully aimed and fired; the shot slowly killed Dickinson, but Jackson prevailed. Jackson blamed the press for causing Rachel’s untimely death, but even after she preceded him to the grave, Jackson continued to duel for her honor.
Vlad Dracula
The Prince of Wallachia, is best known for impaling anyone who pissed him off. “Dracula” is a family name meaning Son of the Dragon, and Vlad had plenty of daddy issues. When Vlad was just 13, his father sent him and his younger brother as vassals to the Ottoman empire. Vlad rose to power after his father was killed and his older brother was blinded by hot irons and then buried alive. He impaled thousands of peasants for harboring rivals, and impaled members of the nobility for questioning his power. Then, to really prove his point, he rebuilt a castle with the enslaved families of the impaled nobles. Bored with impaling on home turf, he set his sights on the Ottomans, impaling over 20,000 prisoners and waging a guerrilla war that eventually drove them out. Hailed a national hero, Vlad was then imprisoned by alienated nobles who sided with his younger brother. No one really agrees on what happened to him after his release.
Genghis Khan
He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. After founding the Mongol Empire and being proclaimed “Genghis Khan”, he started the Mongol invasions and raids of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, Caucasus, Khwarezmid Empire, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. During his life, the Mongol Empire eventually occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia.
At his wedding he had his bride’s former suitors boiled alive in front of her.
Masutatsu Yama
The founder of Kyokushin Karate, found traditional Karate too soft and spent his life perfecting a punch called the Godhand. He did this by secluding himself from society for approximately 3 years, training in the Japanese mountains, and sleeping in temples. Yama’s training regimen included meditating under waterfalls, working out 16 hours a day, breaking rocks and trees with his bare hands, fighting wild animals, and doing other things normally reserved for Jean-Claude Van Damme training montages. When he returned to society he picked an empty lot, called it Yama Dojo, and started showcasing his skills by fighting animals and people alike. Yama fought bulls barehanded, reputedly killing 3 with a single strike, and even fought 300 men in 3 days.
Robert Paddy Mayne
A British soldier, Mayne was one of the most decorated World War II soldiers. But that is where the comparisons to Murphy end. Mayne loved fighting, drinking, and doing both at the same time. He would drink for hours in between missions and would then challenge every man in the bar to a fight. On the battlefield it was a different story. He single-handedly rescued a squadron by lifting the wounder one-by-one into his Jeep before destroying Nazi gunners in a nearby farmhouse. Mayne once attacked a commanding officer who gave orders that killed 130 of Mayne’s men. Most would have been court-martialed, but the British Army quickly remembered that he had pioneered drunkenly driving a Jeep into enemy airfields with guns blazing. He had destroyed over 100 enemy aircraft by himself using this method and no one thought it sound to disturb Mayne.
Carlos Hathcock
A United States Marine Corps sniper with a service record of 93 confirmed kills. The North Vietnamese Army even put a bounty of $30,000 on his life for killing so many of their men. The Viet Cong and N.V.A. called Hathcock Ng Trang, translated as “White Feather,” because of the white feather he kept in a band on his bush hat. After a platoon of trained Vietnamese snipers were sent to hunt down “White Feather,” many Marines in the same area donned white feathers to deceive the enemy. During a volunteer mission on his first deployment, he crawled over a thousand meters of field to shoot a commanding NVA general. He wasn’t informed of the details of the mission until he was en route to his insertion point aboard a helicopter. This effort took four days and three nights, without sleep, of constant inch-by-inch crawling. One of Hathcock’s most famous accomplishments was shooting an enemy sniper through his scope, hitting him in the eye. Hathcock’s career as a sniper came to a sudden end outside Khe Sanh in 1969, when an amphibious amtrack he was riding on struck an anti-tank mine. Hathcock pulled seven Marines off the flame-engulfed vehicle before jumping to safety. He was told he would be recommended for the Silver Star, but he stated that he had only done what anyone there would have if they were awake, so he rejected any commendation for his bravery. Nearly 30 years later, he was awarded the Silver Star.
Liver Eating Johnson
Not quite the quiet, wise mountain man portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie “Jeremiah Johnson”. He married a Salish Indian woman in 1846, built a log cabin and was basically regarded as the toughest and most bad ass motherfucker in town.
Well, apparently the Crow Indians didn’t get the memo. They attacked his home one day while he was out in the wilderness, killed his vastly pregnant wife, scalped her corpse, and burned his house to the ground.
Johnson completely fucking lost it. He flipped out and started killing Crow warriors wherever he could find them, and then, just to be even more fucking insane, he would cut out the livers of his slain enemies and eat them. Hence the “Liver Eating” part.
During the course of his twenty-five year blood feud with the entire Crow Nation, Johnson claims to have killed something on the order of 300 braves, including one time when he took out an entire raiding party of 20 warriors who had been sent to ambush and kill him. He was soon known as “Dapiek Absaroka” (“Crow-Killer”) by the Crow, “Liver-Eating Johnson” by his fellow frontiersmen, and “That Fucking Insane Cannibal Mountain Man” by pretty much everybody else.
Edward Teach
Also known as Black Beard the pirate, Teach would braid fuses into his hair and then light them before boarding his victim’s ship. Try to imagine a six foot, sword wielding, hair ablaze, raging maniac coming at you. Historians agree that he had 14 “wives”. When he decided to retire he picked a few close friends and marooned the rest of his crew. It is believed that his only “official” wedding was to 16 year old Mary Ormond. He then tried to settle into the life of a country gentleman. During a picnic with his wife’s friends, he decided to resume being a pirate. He killed the picnic party and went back to Nassau where he gave his wife to his crew where she was passed around like a glass of water.
William Wallace
Contrary to the movie Braveheart, Wallace was a Scottish knight and landowner who is known for leading a resistance during the Wars of Scottish Independence and regarded as a patriot and national hero. Wallace enters history when he killed William Heselrig, the English Sheriff of Lanark, in May, 1297. According to later legend this was to avenge the death of Marion Braidfute of Lamington the young maiden Wallace courted and married in Blind Harry’s tale. Although full of historical inaccuracies, “Braveheart” pretty much lays out how much of a pain in the ass Wallace was to England.
