Heroes
Examples of human behavior which shows genius or heroism
or maybe just very interesting characters
Benefactors of Humanity
Good Examples to us each and every one
I cannot list every person who should be on this page. There are too
many. So it will be an ongoing process. It is my page and my definition of
who should go here. You can have yours. However, let me know if you think
of someone who should go here. If I agree with you I will put that person
here. If not then we just have a difference of opinion.
I intend it to be general benefactors of humanity either by their genius or
by their bravery or by their example. To act heroically one must knowingly do
something to benefit another which is or easily could be detrimental to
himself/herself. It does not count if he/she has no other choice.
I also will include those who show genius and those who are just very
interesting and unique characters.
Most significant events of the last half of the 20th century - join the discussion
- New York City - September 11, 2001
- The Policemen and Firemen of New York City who put themselves in mortal
danger to try to save those in the World Trade Center towers. Also, the
passengers and crew of Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. These ordinary
people crashed their plane to save others. Also, the other unknown heroes of
that horrible day who risked their own lives for others. (I suspect there
were many.)
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- The man had a dream and gave his life for it.
See A Letter From the Birmingham Jail - by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and his "I Have a Dream" Speech
and Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University
- Anwar Sadat
- He went to Israel and was eventually killed for his actions but not before
he brought peace between two nations.
- Yitzhak Rabin: 1922-1995
- Another life lost to the cause of peace in the Middle East.
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- He gave the Soviet peoples their freedom and presided over the end of
communism while trying to save it. It almost cost him his life.
- Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma
- The most impressive and charismatic woman in
Asia is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and champion of Burma's
democratic movement. Daughter of the Burmese independence leader,
Aung San, she was placed under house arrest by the country's
ruling military junta in 1989 for leading a pro-democracy
uprising. She was released last year after six years' detention,
without bowing to her captors. In 1988 she helped to found the
National League for Democracy, which won a landslide victory two
years later. The military refused to honour the results and
bloodily suppressed all dissent. During her detention, she
refused offers of freedom in exchange for exile and remained
committed to democracy. She is the most potent symbol of the
struggle for democracy under South East Asia's most reviled
regime.
- Nelson Mandela
- Jailed for much of his life for demanding freedom for his people he helped
institute a government for all sides and became President of South Africa.
See the Mandela Page
- Mahatma Gandhi
- He brought Independence to India
- General Dwight D. Eisenhower and all the members of the Allied armed
forces of WWII
- This is the only group of people that I have ever been fairly sure
actually did save the world.
- U. S. Congressional Medal of Honor Citations
- Read about some real heroes.
- Sojourner Truth
- Ain't I a Woman? A unique campaigner for women's rights and racial justice.
- Sir Richard Burton
- Nineteenth century English explorer, writer, adventurer, linguist and Renaissance man. A very interesting character.
- Norbert Reinhart, 49, a mining executive from Alberta Canada, who swapped
places with an abducted employee as a hostage of leftist rebels in Columbia.
- After one of his employees, whom he had not met, was abducted and held for
ransom in Columbia, this man risked his own life by offering himself in
exchange for the employee. He was then held hostage for three months before
being released unharmed in early 1999.
- Richard Rivera, an auxilary police officer in New York
- He snatched a two year old child from beneath a moving subway train in
October 1995.
- The four Green Berets at Fort Bragg North Carolina
- Unarmed they attacked and stopped a shooter who had already shot 19
soldiers in the early morning of October 27, 1995.
- Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson
- and his crew mates, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, who landed their
helicopter in front of advancing American GIs and trained their guns on them
to halt the unlawful massacre of civilian non-combatants in My Lai, Vietnam,
March 16, 1968.
- Jaime Stanley of New Haven, Connecticut
- This 19 year old supermarket clerk witnessed a drive by shooting on Feb.
3, 1994. In spite of repeated threats against her life by the members of the
shooter's cocaine gang, she testified against the shooter in court 13 months
later. With no gain to herself and in the face of great personal danger, she
did what was right.
Comments by visitors to this page
From: Joao Pedro
You list:
General Dwight D. Eisenhower and all the members of the Allied armed forces
of WWII
I don't agree simply because it is my profound conviction that if they
were Germans they would have still fighted for Germany and they would
still have commited several atrocities. Actually, I consider the Dresden
bombing a war atrocity bigger than any commited by the Germans (this, of
course, if we don't consider the holocaust as a war crime, which I
don't).
My opinion is that armies are pretty much alike in terms of ethical
conduct. Specially in western countries I'm conviced that they're all
the same. If Eisenhower received an order to kill 500'000 Germans he
would have caried it out.
I disagree with this choice of yours also because I feel many other
persons (the German generals, for example) would have done the same
thing if they were in this men positions, something that doesn't apply
to the other examples you have.
See my web page - Reason's Triumph
ARTISTS
The Beatles
Elvis Presley
Jim Reeves
Mozart
Beethoven
the Bachs - all of them
Wagner
Van Gogh
Rubens
Renoir
John Steinbeck
Henry David Thoreau
Issac Asimov
Arthur C. Clark
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Last revised September 15, 2001.
URL: http://webcom.com/~duane1/heroes.html
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Duane Bristow (oldky@webcom.com)
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