6 Nancy Wake ran away from home at 16 with just £200 and went to London. During WW2, the Nazis executed her husband. She worked as a nurse, a journalist, a courier for the French Resistance, and eventually, a spy for the Special Operations Executive. She was also responsible for destroying the Gestapo headquarters.

Nancy Wake, made history as one of the greatest servicewomen of all time. She is well known for her undercover activities as a part of the French Resistance network. She later joined British Special Operations and continued helping other resistance fighters. 

Wake risked her life helping Jewish and Allied servicemen escape. She was ordered to flee France by the Gestapo. The Gestapo managed to get hold of her husband and killed him. She organized parachute supply drops and maintained radio contact with Special Operations executives.

After the war, she was awarded the George Medal and many more awards being one of the few women who received such awards in history. She used to say, “I don’t see why women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.” (Source)

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7 Leo Major, also known as the “Canadian Rambo,” was a French-Canadian soldier who was wounded and lost an eye during D-Day but saved a whole town by himself. He single-handedly captured 93 German soldiers and took them as prisoners. The soldier was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal twice. He saved a whole village all by himself by making the authorities believe his convincing fake stories of an army attack. 

Leo Major is a decorated war hero in the history of WWII and the Korean War. He lost partial vision in his left eye during the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944. He continued to work. Later that year, he was sent to retrieve a patrol of fresh recruits who failed to return to base during the battle of Scheldt. 

He captured 93 German soldiers on his own when he was out on this mission. Shortly after he was caught on an exploding mine and broke his back.

He refused to be evacuated and single-handedly managed to liberate the Dutch town of Zwolle by tricking the Germans into believing there was a much larger Canadian force attacking the town. (Source)

8 Juliane Koepcke at 17 survived a plane crash, a two-mile fall into the Peruvian rainforest, and several days alone in the dense jungle until she was found by locals and led back to civilization. She kept herself alive by recalling her time almost 30-miles away from the site of the crash where she lived for a brief time and got accustomed to the forest.

Koepcke was a teenager flying back home with her mother for Christmas when lightning struck the plane and crashed. She fell into a forest and found herself completely alone.

The teenager could hear the other planes searching for survivors, but the forest was too dense. She wandered for more than ten days surviving on her skills to find food and finally found a boat. Koepcke thought she was hallucinating at this point, but it was real.

The next day, a bunch of men rescued her after she talked to them in Spanish. She survived several days and nights of cold and rain in the forest in a mini-dress she was wearing during the crash. She came across severely disfigured dead bodies and animals in the jungle but managed to stay alive through it all. (Source)

9 Peter Freuchen led a remarkable and incomparable life. He was a Danish explorer, who explored the Arctic, lived with Inuit people, took part in Second World War, escaped a death sentence from Nazi’s, won 64,000 dollars on the American TV show The $64,000 Question, married an Inuit woman, then a margarine Heiress later became the illustrator who introduced Christian Dior, and was awarded the Gold Medal from the International Benjamin Franklin Society. 

Freuchen’s life is a turn of events that had ultimately made his life incredibly remarkable. He started as an Arctic explorer. He went on to write several books on Arctic life along with the history and culture of the Inuit tribe.

In the 1960s, his book on Eskimos gained much popularity as a bestseller. The explorer has a leg amputated due to frostbite and even acted in a movie that went on to win an Oscar.

This is just a small part of his life. He won the Gold Medal of the International Benjamin Franklin Society for his “service to mankind.” He died of a heart attack in 1957. (Source)

10 Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. He led one of the most well-organized and successful efforts to rescue Jews from Nazis. During the year 1944, he was very much involved in working with different authorities to release bearers of certificates of protection.

Raoul successfully led several rescue missions to save Jews. He was working with the US War Refugee Board during that time to save Jews. His work saved thousands of Hungarian Jews. The US government awarded him with American citizenship for his work.

He issued several certificates of protection for Jews with the authorization of the Swedish Government. Wallenberg established hospitals, kitchens, and nurseries for refugees in Budapest.

The exact date of his death and the circumstances leading to it is unknown because he just disappeared. Seventy-one years after his disappearance, Swedish officials declared him dead. (Source)