6 The Battle of Castle Itter is also known as the “strangest battle of Second World War,” during which German Wehrmacht soldiers and US soldiers fought together against a small unit of SS soldiers to protect French prisoners, and one of the prisoners among them was the former French Prime Minister.

Just two days before Germany’s surrender, on 5 May 1945 in Austrian North Tyrol, the Battle of Castle Itter took place. The castle was used as a prisoner camp, and only high-profile prisoners were kept there.

The conditions were alarming. The 14 prisoners at that moment were free, but the nearby SS troops were ordered to execute them all.

The prisoners needed urgent help to survive, so they sent their cook, Andreas Kroboton, on 4 May to seek help. He found Major Joseph Gangl at Worgol, a Nazi soldier, and explained the situation. Gangl was disillusioned by the Nazi ideology and defied the orders to join SS forces. He instead decided to assist those who resisted them.

To get a grip on the situation, he approached the nearest American troops with a white flag. That force was led by Captain Jack Lee who agreed to help out.

The Nazi and the US soldiers defended the castle side by side on 5 May against 100 to 150 SS soldiers who were intent on storming into the fort.

As soon as the Allied German forces were out of ammunition, relief forces appeared from the North on Lee’s call for backup. They drove the SS troops away and imprisoned around 100 of them.

The event witnessed only one casualty, Joseph Gangl. (1, 2, 3)

7 Edgar Allen Poe wrote a novel in 1838 describing how the four shipwrecked survivors at the point of starvation chose cannibalism. They killed a young cabin boy named Richard Parker and ate him. In 1884, a ship, the Mignonette, sank, but four of its crew members survived. At the point of starvation, they too killed and ate the youngest of them with the same name – Richard Parker.

The name of the novel is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket that featured the tale of young Arthur Gordon Pym who was aboard the ship Grampus. Pym’s story is not complete and narrates only 25 chapters in which he describes his and his crew’s near-death situation.

They survived by eating turtles after running out of ration and were later only left with the option of sacrificing one of them to feed the rest. They drew lots, and Parker was the one who lost. The book was initially highly criticized because of its violent content and inaccuracies.

Is it a mere coincidence that 50 years later a man of the same name, Richard Parker, lost his life in the same fashion? He was one of the shipwreck’s initial survivors but was eventually eaten by his fellow survivors. (source)

8 Mad Jack Churchill was the only man to have a successful longbow kill in the Second World War. Churchill was captured with his squad when he marched into the German forces playing a bagpipe. He escaped two different concentration camps and also always carried a Scottish longsword with him.

Churchill worked really hard to master his skills at archery and was competing in the World Archery Championship in 1939.

By 1940, his reputation grew and he came to be known as “Fighting Jack Churchill.” He was put in charge of a small group of men. He usually was equipped with a longbow, broadsword, knives, grandees, and a strange revolver.

His raids were semi-suicidal, and he survived multiple explosions. He captured more than 40 German soldiers at sword point in a single raid.

He practiced guerrilla warfare, staging raids, and even survived many rounds of clipping machine gunfire.

Churchill was captured in 1944 while he was assisting Joseph Tito’s forces in Yugoslavia on the island of Brac.

He was knocked down by a grenade, captured, and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He managed to escape the camp but was recaptured after running away for 125 miles. He was then put into another camp that he escaped as well and eventually united with American forces. (1, 2)

9 “Unsinkable” Sam is a ship cat who survived the sinking of the German Bismarck during the Second World War. Then Sam switched sides to the Allies and also survived the sinking of both the HMS Cossack and HMS Ark Royal ships.

Sam was owned by a crewman on the German battleship Bismarck that sank on 27 May 1941. Only 118 out of 2,200 sailors on the Bismarck survived.

Luckily, Sam was found floating on a board and was rescued by the Allied ship HMS Cossack. Later on 24 October 1941, the Cossack was hit by a torpedo, so the crew had to transfer to another ship.

The cat then received a special transfer to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal that too got torpedoed on 14 November 1941. Surprisingly, Sam survived that incident as well and died normally in 1955.

Sam is undoubtedly one famous cat in history! (1, 2)

10 Soviet scientists starved to death to save the seed bank of Leningrad during Hitler’s invasion in the winter of 1941-42. The place was full of rice, beans, corn, wheat, and potatoes, but they restrained themselves from eating so that they can save the seeds for the future.

Nine botanists sacrificed themselves for the sake of science and the future. The team of researchers belonged to the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry. Their contribution helped the institute become one of the world’s largest repositories of the genetic diversity of food.

During the Nazi invasion, the conditions at the Institute became extremely severe. It was cold, damp, and dark – largely unheated.

The scientists also made extra efforts to smuggle the prepared samples out of Leningrad. The samples were sent to the Ural Mountains to a frozen lake at a storage facility.

The remaining stock at the institute was very securely kept. Nobody was allowed to enter the storage rooms alone.

Moreover, the scientists also found a small plot of land near the outskirts of the city to plant the seeds because cold conditions had decreased the seeds’ viability and they needed to be planted immediately.

The Siege at Leningrad extended until 1944. The Soviet Union lost, but the Vavilov Institute didn’t. The seed collection was preserved, expanded, and prospered during the postwar years. (source)

11 Doris Miller even being a cook saved lives and gunned down Japanese warplanes while serving on a ship during the Second World War. He had no previous training with an anti-aircraft gun and was later awarded the Navy Cross and Purple Heart. Despite his heroism, he was still assigned as a cook on Liscome Bay and died by a torpedo.

Miller was especially known for his bravery during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and he was the first African American recipient of the Navy for valour.

His motivation for joining the Navy was driven by a desire to travel and support his family. He joined the navy just as a ship’s mess attendant and later climbed steadily to the rank of ship’s cook.

During the attack of Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, he was actually doing laundry when he heard alarms callin the ship’s crew to the battle station. Miller saved a torpedo in a gun magazine amidship, then saved ship’s commander Mervyn Bennion who was mortally wounded.

He also equipped a 50 caliber anti aircraft gun and continued firing at the enemy until he ran out of ammunition. He died in 1943 on a ship that got torpedoed. (source)