Hero Facts

In 1918, a homing pigeon saved over 190 American soldiers by delivering a message to nearby support despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood, and with a leg hanging on by just a tendon.

In 1998, Jo Ann Altsman had a heart attack alone in her vacation trailer. Her 150-pound pig Lulu squeezed through the dog door, cutting her belly, and lay down in the middle of the road. Cars drove around her. She kept going back to check on Jo Ann, then back to the road. A driver finally stopped. Lulu led him to the trailer. Doctors said 15 more minutes and Jo Ann likely would have died. Lulu later died of a heart attack herself.

When the towers fell on September 11, the Coast Guard put out one call on marine radio: all available boats. Ferry captains turned mid-route. Tugboat operators dropped everything. Fishing boats, private yachts, dinner cruises - hundreds showed up. In nine hours, they evacuated nearly 500,000 people by water. The largest maritime evacuation in history. Larger than Dunkirk, which took nine days.

Chuck Feeney co-founded Duty Free Shoppers and became a billionaire. Then he secretly gave it all away. He wore a $10 Casio watch. Flew economy. He gave away $8 billion. None of the 1,000 buildings his money built bear his name. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both credit him as their inspiration. He died at 92.

Hollywood casts Danny Trejo as the villain in over 400 films - because he spent 11 years in and out of prison. In August 2019, he was near a Sylmar intersection when a car ran a red light and flipped an SUV with a baby inside. Trejo crawled in through a broken window, and with bystander Monica Jackson freeing the car seat latch from the other side, pulled the child to safety. He kept the boy calm by yelling "superpowers" together. Hollywood was wrong about him.