6. Cheating death
Starting this list slow, we have Margorie McCall who died in 1705 after she fell ill in Ireland. The story goes that during her wake people were (rudely) talking about a ring that was on her finger, which was very valuable. Some were worried grave robbers would dig her up at night after the funeral to steal her ring (though we can put it also on them wanting to somehow take it for themselves). Even so, they could not make it budge off the finger, so they buried her with it.
That night, like the mourners, feared, robbers came to exhume the body and steal her ring. When they could not take the ring off they decided to cut off the finger to get it. But it did not go as they planned! When the knife pierced Margorie’s skin, she woke up from the dead, scaring the robbers half to death and making them flee. Most probably, due to the period, this was in, Margorie was in a coma and they believed her to be dead, but the pain woke her up. Nevertheless, the woman walked back home to the family, effectively shocking them too.
She died of natural causes years later being buried in the same graveyard. The woman had a great sense of humor: on her tombstone there’s the inscription “Lived Once, Buried Twice”. What happened to her ring is unknown.
5. A true fighter
Jim Bowie was the designer of the Bowie knife, and his life had thrown him a lot of hardships, but it took a lot before he managed to die, as the man truly refused to die. He took part in the Texas Revolution, standing up proud in the battle of the Alamo which was his last battle. But before he took part in all of these, he first cheated death in 1828, when he won a duel by killing a man.
Bowie was a known drunk and he also had yellow fever at one point. Health problems did not evade him as it is believed he had typhoid or pulmonary tuberculosis, potentially both! None of these took his life, not even after he fell from a roof and broke several ribs leaving him with impaired breathing and made him bedridden at the start of the Battle of the Alamo. Witnesses say that they saw enemies go to his sickbed and attack him with bayonets, even carrying him out to the square to continue to stab him. Despite being wounded and feverish, Bowies continued to fight them, even when he was brought back to bed. He fired his rifle at them, and when they got close enough he got up and stabbed a man with the knife he designed, then shot another one at close range before the life drained out of him.
It took more than a surprise attack to take Jim Bowie down, and even then, he made sure it would not be an easy feat to kill an injured, feverish man.
4. Flying shenanigans
There is little chance that you have heard of New Zealand pilot Keith Caldwell, but his action during World War I went down in history. Besides being the “highest scoring” New Zealand air ace (25 successful missions), he was one of the fearless, aggressive pilots. Despite being late to enlist when the war broke out, he ended up in the Flying School and later in England as part of the Royal Flying Corps. He was soon promoted to flying commander and was known to be a very skilled fighter, even doing daring feints and tail-spin dives in duels with the flying German ace Werner Voss. Many tried to kill him, but none managed
His luck ran out in the final weeks of World War I when he collided with another aircraft mid-flight, damaging his wing struts. This sent him spinning downwards. Daring and not wanting to see his end there, Caldwell crawled onto the lower wing as he fell down, removed the obstruction, and then held the wing strut as he piloted with his other hand. He managed to fly the plane over British Lines and jump out of the plane before it crashed. He survived World War I without a scratch, and was active during the Second World War too, living his life peacefully as a farmer in New Zealand when not active.
Nothing could kill this man, neither wars nor plane crashes, only old age could get him!
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