Actors have to say the lines that are written for them in scripts. Sounds like a pretty simple and uninteresting sentence, right? That’s the number one job of an actor! Whether on stage or on screen, actors have lines they must read, stage directions they must follow, and marks they must hit to make a production go smoothly as planned and led by a director.

But actors don’t always say the lines in their scripts just as the writers intended. In fact, sometimes, actors refuse to say their lines at all! The reasons behind those refusals can be wacky at some times and weirdly inspirational at others. And in this post today, we’ll take a look at ten of the most legendary of those instances.

In this list, we’ll explore the real stories behind ten infamous times when actors refused to say the lines in their scripts. Writers wrote these lines intending for the actor to deliver them as expected. But when it came time for the director to call “action,” these actors surprisingly backed off!

Related: 10 Actors Who Turned Down Movie Roles and Regretted It

10 Patrick Warburton

One episode of Family Guy was so unbelievably offensive that actor Patrick Warburton flat-out refused to say any of the lines. Of course, Warburton was the one who voiced Joe, who was Peter Griffin’s wheelchair-bound friend on the show. And it’s not exactly a secret that Family Guy is filled with all kinds of off-color jokes and highly offensive humor. But sometimes, things can go too far, even for the actors who signed on to do the show and agreed to portray the raunchy characters. And for Warburton, that’s exactly what happened.

While the world doesn’t know exactly which episode the offending lines came in (the episode itself was completely scrapped rather than going through a rewrite), Warburton has talked candidly about why it was so bad. And it had something to do with religion—and Jesus Christ himself. “The episode was so offensive that I can’t repeat it now,” the voice actor said in an interview after the controversy died down. “It had to do with Christ on the cross, but there was no humor in it, and it was just so, so horribly offensive.”

Warburton continued, explaining that it wasn’t one of Joe’s lines that set him off but rather the entire thrust of the episode that failed to hit the mark on telling jokes and moved straight into the territory of being brutally offensive. “It wasn’t a Joe line,” Warburton explained, “but I said, ‘Guys, I can’t participate in this episode if that line is in it. It’s a personal thing.’ I know what I signed up for. I signed up for a really offensive show, and it is satire, and there are different rules that govern satire… because of what they’ve gotten away with.” Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as the producers eventually admitted the joke would have never gotten approved anyway, so they killed the entire thing.^[1]

9 Robert Downey Jr.

At the end of The Avengers, Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic character Tony Stark is shown to be unconscious—until he suddenly wakes up. In the script, as he awoke, he was supposed to say, “What’s next?” RDJ didn’t really care for that line as it was written, though. He felt it wasn’t right for his character.

So he brainstormed with the screenwriters to put down a few other options on paper. Several new ideas came to the forefront, including Stark coming out of his unconscious period by saying, “Please tell me nobody tried to kiss me.” Which is very funny! But it wasn’t the iconic (and altered!) line that everybody really remembers.

Of course, the line we’re referring to is, “And then shawarma after?” RDJ felt like that goofy line was more on brand for Tony Stark, so he delivered it in his patented way. And it delighted theatergoers! In fact, fans loved the line so much that an end credits scene was later added to the movie in which the group of “Avengers” characters is shown grabbing food together after their big-screen adventure. Gotta go get that shawarma after a hard day’s work, ya know?^[2]

8 Crispin Glover

Crispin Glover originally turned down the role of the Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels after he was offered it by producers. He felt that the character’s dialogue was absolutely terrible and not believable, so he didn’t want to be a part of the movie. In his opinion, the dialogue was far too expositional, for one. But he did have ideas to improve the film—and the villain. Luckily, the movie’s producers took the time to listen to him. And they eventually cast him in the role… after Crispin wiped out ALL the character’s lines! Every single one!

Of course, if you’ve seen Charlie’s Angels, you know Glover’s character was written as a mute. That was his idea—to go that far with the character and make him come off in an unsettling way. And the director went along with it! So Crispin accepted the role by being allowed to play the character without saying a word.

Recalling the phenomenon after the hit movie’s success, Glover explained his decision to change (really, eliminate) all of his dialogue. “In the case of Charlie’s Angels, it was a very active character that had to do with a lot of physicality. When I read the screenplay, it was quite expositional; it didn’t need to be said. So it made it much stronger for the character not to say anything.”^[3]

7 Joyce Dewitt

One episode of the sitcom Three’s Company called for people to mistake Chrissy (played by Suzanne Somers) for a prostitute because she had a friend on the show who was a prostitute, and they looked similar. In the episode, that friend was supposed to call Chrissy “priceless.” And in response, Janet (played by Joyce Dewitt) was supposed to deliver a line about how “she’s going to stay that way.” But the real-life Dewitt hated the line, hated that it seemed as though it was devaluing women who are forced into sex work for lack of other options, and flat-out refused to say it.

Things got so contentious during a table read that fellow co-star John Ritter actually offered to have his character say the line instead. However, screenwriters refused to change the script to accommodate that! They REALLY wanted Dewitt’s character Janet to deliver that line. And Dewitt kept refusing. When it was time for the cast, producers, and writers to hold their table read in preparation for that controversial episode, Dewitt blew up at a producer named Mickey over the prostitute line.

Recalling the fight about the script years later, Dewitt said, “I leaned back in my chair and took the deepest breath. And instead of answering his idiotic question [about saying the line], I said, ‘Mickey, I’ll tell you what the deal is with this line. You can come out with a gun during the five-thirty show and hold it to my head, and I still won’t say that line for you. Is that clear enough?’ That’s what it took.” And indeed, the line was removed from the script and Dewitt got her way. Good for her!^[4]

6 Robert Reed

When Robert Reed played Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch, he was notorious among producers and screenwriters on the sitcom for fastidiously fact-checking all of his scripts. The most notable case in which Reed fact-checked a script and demanded a line change came during an episode where his TV co-stars Carol and Alice were cooking with strawberry preserves. The script called for Mike (played by Reed) to enter the room and say that the house smelled like “strawberry heaven.” There was just one problem with that line: Strawberries don’t have a smell when they are being cooked.

Reed was skeptical that anything could smell like “strawberry heaven,” so he did his research. And sure enough, he confirmed that strawberries smell like nothing while being cooked into dishes! So he decided he couldn’t say the line since it wouldn’t be true and accurate. He told screenwriters that he wouldn’t say that line since it wasn’t actually true, and he didn’t want to pass along misinformation. In an era like the modern one where fake news seems to be rampant, it sure is a breath of fresh air to hear of an actor so committed to telling the truth in every one of his lines!^[5]

5 Matthew Perry

Forget about just changing one or two lines in a script—sitcom star Matthew Perry once got an entire episode of Friends nixed! The episode was all about Perry’s character, Chandler Bing, going to a male strip club. The premise of the ep was that Chandler would go to the male strip club and even become a regular there because he liked the sandwiches—and not the men dancing on stage. However, the real-life Perry didn’t think that was a very wise episode for the long-running hit show to churn out. So he used his influence to kill the episode.

Perry read the script after it was first put in front of him for a table read. While the screenwriters were hopeful it would be a hit, he balked at it right from the start. Years later, Perry recalled how he killed the episode in an interview with Andy Cohen. And at the time, the legendary sitcom star needed just one line to do it! Perry told Cohen how he telephoned the executive producers with his simple demand: “And I called up [the producers], and I said, ‘Let’s not do this one.’” And that was that! The premise was rejected, and the male strip club plotline never came up in any future Friends episodes.^[6]

4 Ian Wright

Famous soccer player Ian Wright had the thrill of a lifetime when he appeared in the hit television series Ted Lasso with a minor cameo. However, Wright’s small but memorable appearance hit a major snag when he was asked to say something nice about the professional soccer club Tottenham! He had spent his entire career on the pitch playing against Tottenham (most notably as part of both Crystal Palace and Arsenal). So he simply couldn’t muster up the desire to say something nice about a club he had opposed so aggressively during his time in the game!

As it was originally intended, the line was supposed to be Wright saying in his guest-starring shot, “You know, it’s gonna be a tough game for Richmond because Tottenham are a great side.” But when it came down to it, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even act like he was saying anything good about Tottenham because he wouldn’t have meant it! Ted Lasso star Phil Dunster recalled what happened when Wright was handed the line in a script: “He was really lovely. He was just like, ‘You’re going to have to change it because I can’t say that.’” And they changed it! The line was removed altogether.^[7]

3 Meryl Streep

The line was supposed to be, “Everybody wants to be me.” But in the end, Meryl Streep made a game-time decision to change it to “Everybody wants to be us.” And when an actress as talented as Meryl Streep makes a call like that, well, what are you going to do? Tell her NOT to change the line? I don’t think so!

We’re talking here about the film The Devil Wears Prada, of course. Streep’s character, Miranda, was the aggressive and intimidating boss of the fashion empire in the flick. In the very last line of the film, screenwriters set it up so that her character could sum up her overly confident attitude by claiming that everybody wanted to be like her, sitting atop the fashion world in New York City. But during the table read for the movie, Streep didn’t like the vibe of that line as it was. So, she altered the “me” to “us” and gave the world an equally memorable final delivery of her own accord!

Actress Anne Hathaway looked back on that table read and the subsequent change in the movie itself years later. During her nostalgic analysis of Streep’s off-the-cuff change, Hathaway reasoned, “I think we all had an idea of what Miranda would sound like. It was a strident, bossy, barking voice. So when Meryl opened her mouth and basically whispered, everybody in the room drew a collective gasp. It was so unexpected and brilliant.”^[8]

2 Jane Fonda

Later in her career, Jane Fonda starred in the sitcom Grace and Frankie. During her run on the show, the legend was held in obvious high regard. In fact, she was so highly thought of that when she balked at delivering a line that the script had called for based on her religious beliefs, writers quickly took out the offending line at her request!

The context was an episode in which Grace, Fonda’s character, had to say, “Jesus Christ” at one point as an exclamation of shock. Fonda quickly informed show creator Marta Kauffman that she wasn’t comfortable with saying those words due to her strong Christian faith. Kaufmann relented and quickly made the change.

Speaking later about the incident and Fonda’s steadfast faith, the show creator explained, “These four actors are the most professional, glorious people I’ve ever worked with. I love them. So when they have an issue, it’s not that they’re being divas. It’s not that they’re being self-important. They have a real issue.”^[9]

1 Harrison Ford

In the original Star Wars script, Harrison Ford’s character Han Solo was supposed to say, “I love you, too,” after Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, delivered her memorable “I love you” line. But when it came time to do the scene, Harrison went off-road with the improvisation and changed the line completely! Instead of saying, “I love you, too,” when Fisher dropped the monumental admission, Ford’s Han Solo replied, “I know.” And the whole thing was completely off the cuff!

Years later, Star Wars fans came to learn that Harrison hadn’t told anyone about his intention to change the line at the last minute. In fact, he didn’t really know that it would play out like that until he did it on the spot. He felt like “I know” fit Han Solo’s cocky personality much better than dropping an “I love you, too” on Princess Leia.

So he went with his gut and delivered the unscripted line. Thankfully for Ford, filmmaker George Lucas loved the ad-lib and kept it in the movie. It quickly became one of the most memorable lines of the whole damn thing, too. Turns out Ford had some pretty good instincts working in his favor on that one!^[10]

A strange thing happened on Western Frontier. During the days of Wild West, American pioneers were moving out into untamed and treacherous land. They were building their homes in a virtual war zone, on land stolen from the natives, and that meant that their lives—and the lives of their children—were constantly at risk.

Pioneer children, in the days of the American frontier, would often be kidnapped by raiding warriors. When Native American tribes lost their own children in wars with the settlers, they would even the score. They would raid a white village, take their children, and carry them back to their homes as hostages. But when their families tracked them down and tried to rescue them, sometimes, the children didn’t want to go home.

It was a strange phenomenon the settlers of America struggled to understand. Even Benjamin Franklin commented on it. “They become disgusted with our manner of life,” he once wrote about the white children captured by native tribes, “and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”^[1]

10 Frances Slocum

In 1835, a trader named George Ewing met an elderly woman of the Miami tribe named Maconaquah. She was in her sixties and a respected woman among the tribe, a widowed grandmother whose husband had been their chief. And so you can imagine his surprise when this old woman told him she had born to white parents.

As a child, he soon found out, Maconaquah’s name had been Frances Slocum, the daughter of a Quaker family who had been stolen away from home by Seneca warriors when she was five years old. A Miami family had bought her for a few pelts, and they’d raised her as their own.

57 years had passed since her capture. She’d grown up among the Miami, gotten married, seen her husband rise to chiefdom, given him four children, and raised them until they had children of their own.

Frances’s brothers hadn’t stopped looking for her since the day she was captured. When word got out that she was still alive, her brother Isaac met with the sister he’d lost decades ago and begged her to come home.

Frances, though, had forgotten how to speak English. Communicating through an interpreter, she told him, “I do not wish to live any better, or anywhere else, and I think the Great Spirit has permitted me to live so long because I have always lived with the Indians.”^[2]

True to her word, she stayed with her captors until the day she died—and she was buried next to the man who had been her husband.

9 Cynthia Ann Parker

Cynthia Ann Parker was nine years old when she was kidnapped by Comanche Indians in 1836.^[3] Her family was slaughtered, and she and four other children were dragged off into the night. Incredibly, she survived the whole horrific ordeal—but she wouldn’t survive going back home.

Four years after her capture, a trader named Williams heard that she was still alive, living among the Comanche. He rode into their camp and offered their chief any amount of money he wanted for her freedom. But when he was given the chance to speak to her, Parker simply stared at the ground and refused to say a word.

It took another 20 years before she was freed. A Texas Ranger force attacked the Comanche tribe, and upon seeing the white-skinned Parker among them, brought her back to her family. After 24 years living among the Comanche, though, Parker wasn’t happy about going home.

She had been there so long that she’d married one of the Comanche warriors, a man named Peta Nocona, who the Rangers had killed. As far as she was concerned, these men weren’t her liberators. They were murderers who had killed the man she loved.

They brought her to her uncle’s farm, but Parker didn’t want to be there. She repeatedly tried to run away, and when she realized she wouldn’t escape, she simply stopped eating. Rather than live among the white man, Cynthia Ann Parker starved herself until, weakened and plagued by influenza, she died.

8 Eunice Williams

Eunice Williams’s father got to see her change. After she was kidnapped by Mohawk warriors (reenactment pictured above), her father, Reverend John Williams, tracked her down and tried to get them to let him buy her freedom. The Mohawks refused to sell her, but they did let Rev. Williams talk to the daughter who would never be his again.

Young Eunice was terrified by everything around her. She told her father about the rituals the Mohawks performed, telling him they were “mocking the Devil.”^[4] She’d described a French Catholic missionary who’d been making her pray with him. “I don’t understand one word of [the prayers],” she told her father. “I hope it won’t do me any harm.”

Ten years later, a man named John Schuyler went to see Eunice—but now she was a completely different woman. She dressed and lived like a Mohawk. She had converted to Catholicism, married a warrior, and refused to speak English. He only got four words out of her the whole two hours he spoke to her. When he asked her to come home and see her father, Eunice simply said: “It may not be.”

7 Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison went through one of the most brutal kidnappings of any child. The story of how her Iroquois kidnappers massacred her family is absolutely horrifying—and yet, for some reason, she willingly stayed with her captors until the day she died.

Mary was 13 years old when a raiding party from the Iroquois Confederacy attacked her home. The Jemisons were forced to march through the woods, urged on by a warrior with a whip who lashed them whenever they slowed their step. They were not fed. If someone asked for water, the Iroquois warriors would force them to drink urine.

In the morning, Mary was pulled apart from her family and forced to march another day. She spent the day wondering what had become of her parents. Then, when nightfall came and they stopped to rest, she found out. While she watched, a warrior pulled her mother and father’s severed scalps out of a bag, scraped them clean, and dried them over a fire.^[5]

She remembered seeing her parents’ scalps dry for the rest of her life. In her old age, she would relate the story as if it was a swashbuckling adventure from an exciting childhood, but she never left her home. She moved in with a Seneca family, married a Delaware man, and, for reasons only Mary Jemison truly understood, became so attached to her family that she refused to ever leave their side, regardless of what had happened to her parents.

6 Herman Lehmann

Herman Lehmann didn’t see himself as a white boy living among the Apaches. To him, he was an Apache warrior through and through. He was kidnapped at age ten, and it changed him so much that when he was found eight years later, he couldn’t even remember his own name.

By then, Lehman was a respected warrior in his tribe who called himself “En Da.”^[6] He’d been made a petty chief for his ability to fight, and he’d joined the Apaches in raids and battles, even leading a charge right into a fort full of Texas Rangers.

All that changed, though, when a medicine man killed his adoptive father, an Apache warrior named Carnoviste. Lehman took his revenge and killed the medicine man. He then had to flee into the wilderness. For a year, he lived alone, hiding from the Apaches and the white men alike, until he finally settled down in a Native American reservation.

When his mother heard there was a white-skinned, blue-eyed boy on the reservation, she came out, praying it was her son. At first, she didn’t recognize him, and Herman was less than friendly. “I was an Indian,” he explained, “and I did not like them because they were palefaces.” But Herman’s sister spotted an old scar only he could have and, overcome with joy, cried out, “It’s Herman!”

The sound of the name puzzled him. Somehow, Herman thought he’d heard it before. It took a long moment, Herman would later recall, before he realized that he was hearing his own name.

5 Olive Oatman

When Olive Oatman wrote about her life as a Mohave captive, she called them “savages.” She wrote about them as if they were wild men and her time with them had been hell, but there were hints she wasn’t telling the truth. The biggest clue was as a plain as her face: the large, blue tattoo that covered her jaw.

Oatman had grown up in a Mormon family, but she was captured by Apaches while her family was traveling to California. The Apaches had sold her to a Mohave family that took her as her own, and for five years, she lived as a Mohave.

When Olive’s brother—the sole surviving member of her family—found her, her tribe was suffering through a famine, and many were starving. The people around her were dying, and, worried for her life, her adoptive family let her go home.

Oatman wrote a book about her experiences that criticized the Mohave, but there were signs she wasn’t being totally honest. She dressed like them, lived like them, and had willingly agreed to the blue tattoo on her face. And she’d claimed that the “savages” had not made her “unchaste”—but her name among the Mohave was “Spantsa,” a name meaning “sore vagina.”^[7]

Nobody knew the truth about Olive Oatman’s experience except for her. But some believe that living among the Mohave may have changed her more than she was willing to admit.

4 The Boyd Children

The five Boyd children managed to get away from their captors. After years living with Iroquois and Delaware families, their father brought them back home. Instead of being grateful, though, they bolted into the night. They fled their father’s home to get back to the people who had kidnapped them.

The children had been taken by Iroquois raiders and dragged out so they could be sold to other tribes. On their painful road into captivity, they were forced to watch as the warriors beat their pregnant mother to death for failing to keep up the pace. Her dead body was left behind.

It took four years before their father, John Boyd, was able to rescue any of them. The first one he saved was his eldest son, David. The boy wasn’t as happy to see his father again as John had hoped. David protested and said he didn’t want to leave his Delaware family and, after a short time, snuck out in the night, left his father’s farm, and went back to the tribe.^[8]

Over the next four years, his father went from tribe to tribe, buying his children’s freedom and bringing them back home—and saw nearly every single one sneak out into the night and leave him to go back to their captors. He freed every single one of his children, but he wasn’t able to keep them all at home.

3 Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell is just one name among hundreds of children who were kidnapped during Pontiac’s War. She, and the other children like her, were stolen away from their parents’ homes and sent to live with native tribes as revenge for the deaths of their own people, meant to replace the children the native tribes had lost.

When the war ended, Colonel Henry Bouquet demanded the children be released. He drew up a list of over 200 names of children who had been abducted from their homes, handed it to Pontiac’s warriors, and made them promise to return every one if they ever wanted to see peace in their lives again.

The tribes agreed, and the 200-plus children were sent back to their families. Mary Campbell, though, had to be dragged back to her family by force. She didn’t want to go home—and even once they brought her back, she still tried to escape and run back to the Lenape family that had captured her.

It’s a strange story, but Campbell wasn’t the only one who tried to run from her parents. Of the children Col. Bouquet freed, nearly half tried to escape their biological families, preferring to live with the families that had kidnapped them rather than the ones that had brought them into the world.^[9]

2 Theodore Babb

Theodor Babb, 14 years old, was determined to hate his Comanche captors. They had murdered his mother and dragged him and his ten-year-old sister Bianca into captivity. They could kill him if they wanted, Theodor decided, but he would not live among them.

After days of being beaten for his stubbornness, Theodor tried to escape from his captors, but he didn’t get far. The Comanche dragged him back and beat him brutally. Theodore, though, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying. He wouldn’t even flinch, no matter how hard they hit him.

Frustrated, the Comanche tied him to a tree and started placing grass and branches at his feet, ready to burn him alive. Bianca wailed and cried for her brother’s life, but Theodor still wouldn’t flinch. Throughout it all, he stared the men who were getting ready to kill him in the eyes, daring them to go through with it.^[10]

They didn’t. The Comanche realized this young boy was unusually brave and, instead of killing him, trained him to be a warrior. They armed him, taught him to ride like a Comanche warrior, and showed him how to run raids.

For all he’d resisted it, as a Comanche warrior, Theodore started tapping into a part of himself he’d never been able to touch before. Within six months, he was so much a part of the tribe that when his father tried to buy him back, the Comanche chief was convinced he would refuse to leave.

In the end, Theodore did go home—but he had changed. After just six short months of captivity, he was already a Comanche warrior who had joined in on multiple raids on white men’s farms.

1 Adolph Korn

After Adolph Korn was freed from his Comanche captors, his parents moved him far away from the tribe that had harassed them. Unlike the other children on this list, he had no way to get back to the people who had kidnapped him, so, rather than live with his own parents, he fled into the wilderness and spent his life alone in a cave.

Korn had been captured when was ten years old and sold to a childless Comanche woman. She took him in as his own, and although he was initially distraught over losing his family, he soon started to enjoy it. Living in a frontier home, he’d struggled to get any attention from his eternally busy parents. Now, though, he had an adoptive mother who focused every second of her energy on him. He felt more loved that he had ever felt before.

His parents managed to get him home three years later, but he never stopped being a Comanche. He would raid his neighbors’ farms and steal their cattle. Soon, he’d built up a long police record, and terrified they’d lose their boy to a different type of captivity, his parents moved far away to a remote ranch.

Korn, though, refused to become a white man. Instead, he left his parents’ home and moved into a cave, where he lived in solitude until the day he died. As a family member said, for the rest of his life, “Adolph kept a solitary vigil for the Comanche brothers whom he knew would never return.”^[11]

Death is a frightening topic for almost everyone. But no matter what, it comes to all of us in the end. Some people—like those who die in accidents—have no control over how or when their demise will occur. Others—like those with long-term fatal illnesses—have time to decide how to face death.

Still, there are some people who just do not want to go. Despite their ominous circumstances, they survive when others would certainly perish—whether by luck or the sheer will to carry on.

Here are 10 people who refused to go gentle into that good night.

10 The Woman Who Was Hanged (And Then Some)

In 1650, housemaid Anne Greene was seduced by the grandson of her employer and became pregnant. But she told no one. She miscarried six months later and buried the body of her son by herself. When the body was discovered, Greene was charged with infanticide despite clear evidence that the child had been born dead.

Greene was found guilty and sentenced to hang. On December 14, she was “turned off” the scaffold, hanging by the neck for almost half an hour while her friends thumped her on the chest and pulled on her legs with all their might to shorten her ordeal.

Finally, her body was cut from the scaffold and was ordered to be sent to a surgeon for experimental purposes. As she was placed in the coffin, a guard heard Greene breathe. He jumped up and down on her chest a few times to finish her off as an act of charity—or so he said.

Despite this, the surgeon revived Anne Greene with “hot and cold cordials,” throat tickling, and a hot enema. The last one, it seemed, did the trick. Anne Greene was later pardoned, got married, and had three more children before finally dying in childbirth in 1665.^[1]

9 The Man Who Fell From His Coffin

In 1571, English farmer Matthew Wall was engaged to be married when he expired suddenly. His friends were carrying his coffin up the steep hill toward the church when one of the pallbearers slipped on wet leaves. The coffin hit the ground with a thud.

In the shocked—and no doubt embarrassed—silence that followed, other thudding sounds could be heard, this time coming from inside the coffin. The sounds were followed by some muffled yelling.

The pallbearers opened the coffin and found Wall alive inside. He had been in a coma, and the jolt of the coffin hitting the ground had brought him back to consciousness.

He went on to marry his fiancee and have two sons. Wall finally died an old man in 1595.

In his will, he bequeathed money to the parish church so that every year, on the anniversary of his first funeral, the church bells would be rung as if for a funeral and then rung again in a wedding peal. He also requested that the lane to the church be swept clear of leaves to ensure that no one else slipped on them.^[2]

The tradition is kept to this day. Each year on Old Man’s Day, the children of the village sweep the lane and are rewarded with sweets while the bells ring.

8 The Man Torpedoed Out Of A Submarine

John Capes was a stoker aboard the submarine HMS Perseus when it sailed from Malta to Alexandria in November 1941. On December 6, the submarine was struck by a mine off the coast of Cephalonia.

There were 61 crew members aboard the vessel. Only Capes made it out alive. He claimed that he had been relaxing in a makeshift bunk hidden in a spare torpedo tube when the mine exploded and that he and three others had escaped through a hatch in the engine room. Capes said that he had taken a fortifying tot of rum, helped his comrades into their life preservers, and then made for the surface 52 meters (170 ft) above.

Capes had to swim 8 kilometers (5 mi) to the shore in the cold December sea at night. He headed for the white cliffs of occupied Cephalonia and was found unconscious on the beach by fishermen the next morning. They hid him from the occupying Italian forces for 18 months, moving him from house to house to evade capture.

In 1943, Capes was finally taken off the island. From there, he went to Turkey and then to Alexandria to serve on another submarine. Though he was awarded a British Empire Medal, many people doubted his extraordinary story, particularly as submarine commanders had been ordered to bolt escape hatches from the outside to prevent them from being forced open during depth charge attacks.

Capes died in 1985. But in 1997, his story was finally confirmed. Divers examining the wreck of the Perseus discovered the compartment exactly as he had described it, with the escape hatch unlocked and open and a torpedo tube with a makeshift bunk inside.

They even found his bottle of rum.^[3]

7 The Woman Dug Up By Grave Robbers

In 1705, Margorie McCall fell ill and died in Shankill, Ireland. During her wake, there was an undignified row among the mourners over a valuable ring the deceased was wearing. Some of them said they wanted to remove the ring to prevent the body from being dug up by grave robbers. The ring, however, would not budge.

So McCall went to her grave still wearing the ring. Sure enough, that very night, her body was exhumed by robbers. After failing to remove the ring, they produced a knife to cut off the ring finger. As soon as the knife pierced her skin, McCall regained consciousness. The robbers fled, and McCall walked home to her shocked family.

When she finally expired, McCall returned to Shankill Graveyard for a second funeral. You can still see her tombstone which bears the inscription, “Lived Once, Buried Twice.” It is not known whether the ring went with her.^[4]

6 The King Who Survived At Least 50 Assassination Attempts

In 1931, King Zog of Albania was shot while leaving the Vienna State Opera House. For most kings, this might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but King Zog had already been shot in the early 1920s. That time, he took a few minutes to compose himself and, still bleeding, carried on to the parliament house to make a speech.

Which is impressive. In a way.

King Zog was not entirely beloved by his fellow Albanians. His tendency toward excess when most of his countrymen were dirt-poor did not always go down well. And the monarchy in Albania was relatively young, so he was not widely accepted outside his country. These factors plus his undeniable habit of murdering his political opponents left Zog a marked man.^[5]

Zog began to find life difficult. He tried not to be seen in public. He put his family in charge of the army and his mother in charge of tasting his food. However, his paranoia was justified. King Zog is said to have survived at least 50 assassination attempts, including some that occurred after he went into permanent exile in 1939.

He finally died of natural causes in 1961.

5 The Man Who Was Mauled By A Bear

In 1818, Hugh Glass escaped from a pirate crew. He was captured by the Pawnee people and accepted into their tribe. Glass learned how to cross swollen rivers, identify edible plants, start fires, and navigate by the stars. All of this would come in handy.

In 1822, he escaped the tribe and joined a fur hunting expedition led by General Ashley in the northern Missouri River area. There, Glass surprised a female grizzly protecting her cubs. The bear attacked, and Glass was badly mauled. Unable to reach for his gun, he was forced to wrestle the bear with his bare hands.

Convinced that Glass was dying, General Ashley laid him on a bearskin rug and called for volunteers to stay with him until he died. Then they were to bury his body. No one seemed keen on it. But two men stayed after being promised a bonus. They dug Glass’s grave and waited.

After three days, it became clear that the terribly injured Glass was not going to die quickly. So the two men stole Glass’s rifle, knife, and other possessions and left him to die alone. When they caught up with the main party, they gave an account of Glass’s death and burial.

Glass used his survival skills to tend to his wounds. He strapped up his leg, wrapped himself in the bearskin rug, and crawled the 322 kilometers (200 mi) back to civilization.

He maintained that the thought of taking revenge on the two men who had left him for dead gave him the strength to keep going. He spent months crawling to the Cheyenne River, where he built a raft and floated downstream toward help.

Despite his wish for revenge, Hugh Glass didn’t kill the men who had betrayed him. Instead, he reported their treachery to the general and returned to Upper Missouri. There, he had several more adventures before he died in a conflict with the Arikaras tribe in 1833.^[6]

4 The Explorer Who Survived Mutiny, Starvation, A Poisoned Arrow, And A Spear

In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan, the first man to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, was killed while attempting to make the first circumnavigation of the world.

He had left Spain with five ships and 250 men in 1519 and headed for the Spice Islands. He survived an attempted mutiny. Then Magellan lost one of his ships during a reconnaissance mission. And he severely underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean. The trip that he believed would take a few days took four long months.

Magellan and his crew began to starve. The food ran out, the water turned putrid, and the men contracted scurvy. When they finally hit land on Mactan Island in the Philippines, they were almost dead. In gratitude to God for helping him to successfully find the island, Magellan decided to convert the indigenous population to Christianity. However, he used cannons and muskets rather than hymn books.

Magellan’s cannon fire was ineffective because the coral reef around the island kept the target out of range. So the invaders waded ashore wearing upper body armor. The tribesmen realized that the crew’s legs were unprotected and aimed their arrows lower.

With his men fleeing all around him, Magellan kept on fighting. He was hit by poisoned arrows. Still, he persevered. He was attacked by spears, but he just couldn’t let it go.

Finally, Magellan collapsed into the shallow surf at the ocean’s edge. There, a native slammed a bamboo spear into Magellan’s face. You’d think that would do it. You would be wrong.

Magellan killed the assailant with his lance. The embattled explorer was trying to draw his sword with his injured arm when a dozen natives “all hurled themselves upon him. [ . . . ] They rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses.”

Though Magellan was dead, some of his men continued the circumnavigation attempt, finally completing the trip in 1522. Only 20 of the original 250 crew members made it home.^[7]

3 The Comrade With 200 Bullets And An Ice Axe

For Leon Trotsky, assassination was always in the cards. Locked in a bitter feud with Stalin, Trotsky had already survived several attempts on his life when Stalin approved a two-pronged plan to rid himself of his rival in 1939.

The first attempt came in May 1940 when a team of hit men crept up on Trotsky’s hideaway in Mexico and fired over 200 bullets into the house with high-powered weapons. Both Trotsky and his wife survived.

However, a much subtler backup plan was already being prepared. Sylvia Ageloff, an ardent Trotsky supporter and member of his staff, had been targeted several years earlier and introduced to a handsome diplomat named Jacques Mornard. In fact, Mornard was neither a diplomat nor was he named Mornard. He was Ramon Mercader, and he was a Stalinist.

Each day, he dropped Ageloff off at Trotsky’s compound, gradually getting on friendly terms with the guards. When Mercader told them that he had written an article that he would like Trotsky to read, they let him in. Mercader was carrying an ice axe with him.

As soon as Trotsky sat down to read, Mercader hit him with the pick end of the ice axe, penetrating his skull 5 centimeters (2 in) deep. Trotsky managed to scream to attract the attention of the guards and hold Mercader fast until they arrived.

Trotsky finally died the following day, and Mercader was imprisoned for almost 20 years before dying in 1978. His last words were said to be: “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”^[8]

2 The Knife Man Who Fell From A Roof, Had TB, Was Stabbed, And Got Bayoneted

Jim Bowie, the designer of the Bowie knife, fought in the Texas Revolution and made his last stand at the Battle of the Alamo. He first cheated death in 1828 when he killed a man in a duel.

It would be fair to call Bowie a hard-living man. He was known to have a sizable drinking problem and almost certainly had yellow fever. In addition, he may have had typhoid, pulmonary tuberculosis, or both. He fell from a roof while drunk, breaking several ribs and leaving him with impaired breathing. He was also bedridden at the beginning of the Battle of the Alamo.

Witnesses stated that they saw enemy soldiers enter Bowie’s sickroom and attack him with bayonets. He was still alive when they carried him into the square where they “tossed him up and caught him on their bayonets.”

Though sick with fever, Bowie fought on. When he was wounded again, he was carried to a bed. From there, he continued to fire his rifle at the enemy until they closed in on him. As they made their final rush, Bowie rose up from his sickbed and stabbed one man in the chest with his eponymous blade and shot another before finally expiring.^[9]

1 The Pilot Who Untangled His Plane After A Midair Collision

Keith Caldwell was a fighter pilot on the Western Front during World War I. He was the “highest-scoring” New Zealand air ace with 25 successful missions.

After a failed attempt to enlist at the outbreak of war when he was just 18, Caldwell raised the £100 tuition and entered the New Zealand Flying School. He gained his “ticket” in December 1915 and sailed to England to join the Royal Flying Corp in early 1916. By the time he headed to the front in July 1916, Caldwell had logged only 35 flying hours over both continents.

At age 22, he was promoted to flight commander and was said to be a fearless, aggressive pilot. By the following October, Caldwell had increased his tally of downed aircraft to nine. He was awarded a military cross and was mentioned twice in dispatches.

He was known for his daring feints, including a tail-spin dive during a duel with the German flying ace Werner Voss. Caldwell pulled out of the dive just before the plane was due to hit the ground.^[10]

In the final weeks of the war, it seemed as if Caldwell’s luck had run out when he was involved in a midair collision. The impact damaged the plane’s wing struts and sent him spinning downward for several thousand feet. To control the descent, Caldwell crawled onto the lower wing, removed the obstruction, and held the wing strut with one hand while operating the joystick with the other.

Caldwell managed to control the descent enough to be able to crash-land behind British lines. He leaped to safety just seconds before the plane hit the ground. Caldwell survived World War I without a scratch and returned to New Zealand to become a farmer.

He returned to active service during World War II, which he also survived.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels and an occasional travel writer.