Real Life - Television Tropes & Idioms

Apollo 8. They went all the way around the moon and back, on Christmas Eve, without any backup engine. And they took one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century: the Earth hanging in space, over the Moon's horizon. 1968 was a horrible year. This mission was its one saving grace.
- Thank you, Apollo 8. You saved 1968.
- The quoting Genesis 1 at the first ever human-witnessed lunar sunrise. Even if you're not Christian, it brought petty daily concerns and grievances to a screeching halt for two minutes.
  - Some atheists/agnostics/Muslims/Sikhs/Jains/Hindus/etc would disagree there. One apparently sued NASA for violating the separation of church and state for permitting said reading.
The Apollo 11 moon landing, a crowning moment of human achievement.
- This includes using a felt pen as a switch to get the Lander off the moon.
- While everyone's heard Neil Armstrong's speech, the inscription on the steel plaque left on the moon is something that gives one goosebumps: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
- As well as the mission logo◊. Not a slightest bit What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic.
- Also, Apollo 11 overshot the landing site and touched down with less than 25 seconds of fuel left. Twenty-five seconds longer and they would have had no choice but to abort.
- Bart Sibrel getting a well-deserved Aldrin PUNCH! was one for Aldrin. No charges were filed against Aldrin. I love it when anti-humanist douchebags get theirs.
  - Note: Buzz had been ambushed previously by the same nut and usually kept his cool. He only punched when the conspiracy nut threatened his daughter, who was with him at the time. Calling An Officer And A Gentleman a liar wasn't particularly intelligent on Sibrel's part, either.
Pete Conrad, of Apollo 12, gave his line when stepping onto the moon to win a bet. (It wasn't a "for money" bet, or for any other tangible asset. Just a Take That to a reporter who claimed that the NASA PR flacks wrote what they were supposed to say.)
Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.
Simply the launch of a Saturn V rocket, at all. Go ahead: try to watch without feeling the least bit intimidated by 170 million horsepower.
- The best thing is the enormous lack of subtlety. Want to get into space? We don't fuck around, we don't try anything fancy, we just punch the sky and try to kill it.
- One of the quotes on a sign at the US Space and Rocket Center says "After a Saturn V launch, the question wasn't if the Saturn had risen the question was if FLORIDA HAD SUNK."
- In the words of Cracked.com:
With the soviet threat rumbling to the east, Kennedy knew there was only one way to restore our national masculinity: by building a gargantuan boner and fucking the moon.
The Apollo 13 rescue where the legendary calm thinking and ingenuity of NASA's glory years is at its finest. Also one of the few major space exploration accidents where the crew survived.
- A little known fact: the RUSSIANS offered their ships to recover the crew in the Pacific and stopped communication on all frequency bands used by the Apollo Project during the incident so as not to interfere. Transcending Cold War hostilities in 1970 gives Apollo 13 a whole new level of CMOA.
  - Also the first Soyuz capsules had instructions in English for opening the hatch painted on the outside. Due to latitude constraints and a landing system not designed for water, North America was one of their designated emergency landing sites.
- Another two other little known facts: The mission almost ended in catastrophic failure before the infamous explosion. During the second stage of the flight, pogo oscillations nearly tore the rocket apart. However this caused the pressure in the middle engine to fluctuate enough to trip a sensor shutting it off and allowing the mission to continue. The other one is the same problem that caused the explosion may have actually saved the lives of the crew. The procedure that lead to the explosion was normally done after the landing team returns from the moon. However, one of the meters spiking for the tank that exploded prompted NASA to trouble shoot by having them stir the tank prior to the landing, triggering the explosion. Had they done it after the landing was over the landing module would have not been available as a "life boat".
- Part of the way through the mission, carbon dioxide began building up in the ship, and the astronauts had no way to get rid of it. They called Mission Control, who then proceeded to jury-rig a filter for the ship. It was held together with duct tape.
Speaking of the lunar missions, special mention must be given to the Grumman development team under Tom Kelly, who designed and built the Lunar Landers. Without them, the Lunar landings would have been impossible.
The Viking Mars probe landing, especially when the pictures came back to show Mars from the ground for the first time.
Yuri Gagarin. First man in space. Need I say more?
- "POYEKHALI!" ("Off we go!")
- He also died guiding his crashing plane down instead of parachuting and letting it crash where it will. He sacrificed himself to protect innocents.
  - So did some pilots from the Belarus, in order to avoid civilian casualties. Uladzimir Karvat is an example, but sadly there are two more who have joined the ranks: Alexander Morfitski and Alexander Zuravlevich. Glory to those heroes, and shame to the army that forces them to be heroes.
- Gagarin was the backup pilot for the Soyuz 1. Knowing it was a doomed trip in an unfinished spacecraft pushed through by the Kremlin, he used all his influence in a failed attempt to cancel the launch. Then he resorted to trying to switch places with the primary pilot (and good friend) Vladimir Komarov, trying to sacrifice himself for his friend's sake. Komarov, also knowing the full risk, rejected Gagarin's offer. The Soyuz 1, after losing every system possible in orbit, managed a manual reentry — something never attempted before or after, nor considered even survivable with a broken guidance system. ...Only to crash at 200 mph when neither the main nor reserve parachute deployed, killing Komarov instantly. Almost there, son, almost there.
Sputnik 1. Even more if you put it in the context of the life of Sergei Korolyov, designer and mastermind of all Soviet space achievements up to his death in 1966: He was purged by false allegations, ended up in a Gulag, had to effectively walk his way back to Moscow from Siberia during the Russian winter when he was recalled, and spent years in an prison for engineers. He wouldn't be officially restored by the Soviet government until after the Sputnik flew. And even after going through hell on Earth he ended up being the man who made the keys to heaven.
Fixing the Hubble. And the photos that ensued.
- Space fans on the Internet creating such a fuss over plans to abandon Hubble that a final rescue mission was launched, just in time to capture a comet hitting Jupiter.
- Of special note to This Troper: the deep field◊, deep field south◊, and ultra deep field◊ images. To put it in perspective, the ultra deep field is an image of how the universe looked 13 billion years ago.
Let's face it: Any astronaut is essentially strapping a load of explosives to his or her ass and lighting it off. That takes bearings of chrome steel.
- Space exploration is just made of awesome.
I took this stuff that I got out of your seal, and I put it in ice water... I believe that has some significance to our problem. - Richard P. Feynman, one of many CMOAs(see below).
The Voyager mission. Also Carl Sagan's personal CMOA.
- "They dared to go where we could only dream."
Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne becoming the first private craft to carry people into space. Of course, when he starts the tourist flights next year, this will easily be topped...
- In the documentary Black Sky, a phone call to a contractor goes something like this: "This is Burt Rutan." "THE Burt Rutan?"
Venera 13, lands on Venus and lives long enough to take pictures and send them back to us, despite the dense 460°C (860°F) carbon dioxide atmosphere. Bravo, USSR!
- This in addition to descending through a perpetual fog of sulphuric acid, crushing surface aer pressure similar to 1km underwater and the carbon dioxide at surface level having reached a supercritical fluid state which would bleed through solid matter like rocks.
The Mars Rovers, one long CMOA. They were built to last three months. They have been roving for FIVE YEARS. Spirit, Opportunity, and JPL, we salute you.
- Turned into a Tear Jerker of Awesome here.
Elon Musk's SpaceX. Their Falcon 1 rocket became the first privately-funded, liquid-fueled rocket EVER to make it in to orbit. A CMOA that may change space flight forever!
Dr. Michael Griffin, NASA's Administrator, recently was asked by a reporter if he thought the next president would have him replaced. His response?
"I don't think so, but if the next president does not believe in returning us to the moon, I will ASK to be replaced."
- Update: He was replaced, but ~~it looks like the new president's going to follow through with his plan anyway.~~
Canadarm. CMOA for Canadian technology.
Space Bat — the bat that pierced the heavens...
- Godspeed, Space Bat.
- If only...◊
Neil Armstrong even before Apollo is kinda awesome. Do you see how many training accidents he's survived?!
- In the film In The Shadow of the Moon, he parachuted out of a trainer for the lunar lander just before it would have crashed and walked away fine. Later that day, a friend asked "So, Neil, how was your day?" With the utmost calm, Armstrong replied "Eh, I almost got killed. How about you?"
Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun got a letter once saying "Space travel is against God's will and I bet you five bucks your boys won't make it anyway." He wrote back "Madam, I have studied the Bible very well, and while I have found nothing disapproving of space travel, I have found that it is dead-set against GAMBLING."
One simple phrase "Return to Flight." That means, in plain English, the first mission to fly again after a disaster. Apollo 7, STS-26 and STS-114, we salute you.
And now, NASA is planning to return to the Moon by 2020's. This Troper just can't wait for Crowning Moment Of Awesome Episode II.
- And then, Mars! Go Constellation!
  - Ares 1-X. LIFTOFF.
- Moon landing's dead, unfortunately. Massive Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
  - This troper actually believes that Charlie Bolden is pulling off one hell of a Xanatos Gambit. If this plan is accepted by Congress, NASA will get to pass the bill for R&D of spacecraft and rockets to commercial companies and enough money to develop stuff like VASIMR drives, space fuel depots, closed cycle life support systems and advanced chemical rockets that would enable those spacecraft to do a lot more than anything Constellation ever planned for. Like affordable commercial inner Solar System travel. Kinda like what NASA used to do when it was called NACA, did a lot of aeronautical research so manufacturers could spend their money not researching, but applying that research.
The International Space Station is a VERY impressive piece of engineering, put together with more flawlessly executed space walks than any other space project in history. And as a result, humans are living in space 365 days per year. Think about that. People are currently living in space every single MOMENT of every single DAY.
- Including right now while you're reading this sentence.
In tribute, Brian Regan offers this hypothetical CMOA for anyone who's been to the moon (it starts in around 2:20)

The 6 Most Badass Stunts Ever Pulled in the Name of Science. Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
In related terms, anything Nikola Tesla did. Try out a working earthquake machine in a major city? Sure, he knew just the construction yard to start in. Turn the planet Earth into a giant conductor, causing blue sparks to float from the ground? Oh, and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it were for those pesky folk at the local electrical plant. The man researched radiation and x-rays before Röntgen ever noticed them — including sending Röntgen an x-ray of his hand — and invented practical radios before Marconi. Much of his radio wave equipment seems unnaturally refined even today, and some of his wireless power transmission experiments are still nearly beyond human ken. In his spare time, the man sat under a Tesla coil spitting seven foot tongues of lightning across the room, writing about cosmic radiation in the hope of harnessing that power. There is a reason Edison advised film teams to base early mad scientist roles around the man. May have accidentally caused the Tunguska Event, or at least believed he did.
Another crowning moment for Carl Sagan - according to his book The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (which is basically a CMOA for skeptics), he and his wife routinely smuggled copies of Trotsky's History Of The Russian Revolution - into the Soviet Union. Awesome!
Galileo Galilei, when told he could write a book about heliocentrism but not slant it in any direction? Did exactly that, writing it as a dialogue ... but the Church-supporting fella? His name was "Simplicius."
- He didn't slant it? Bull! This troper recalls that it's a debate between three people, one heliocentric, one by the old model and one neutral; the neutral winds up convinced within the first couple pages and the rest of the book is bashing on the old model.
- There's also his legendarily snarky comeback: "E pur si muove!"
  - Also attributed to Giordano Bruno, with the added badassery of being on fire at the time.
- Heliocentrism was already an increasingly popular model at the time Galileo published his work; and despite modern myth, the Roman Catholic Church had taken no official position in the debate. On top of that, his description of planetary movements were less accurate than those published by others, in particular rejecting Kepler's superior model of elliptical orbits, for his own circular ones. The controversy stemmed entirely from his use of the heliocentric model (partially confirmed by his observations of the phases of Venus) to attack the Church, insisting that it supported the geocentric model despite official Church statements to the contrary. This was not the ony controversy Galileo was involved in, as he attacked or dismissed the work of a number of other astronomers, most of whose work was superior to his own; especially a long-running feud with Kepler. Galileo's contribution to technology and terrestrial physics was ultimately far more valuable than his questionable astronomy.
Sir Isaac Newton's seminal work, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Not only did he outline the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, he also developed calculus (with an assist). And without calculus, most of the scientists on this list wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
In Principa Methematica (different from the above), Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell. It is an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic. It basically succeeds. It just takes a while to get there.
- 1+1=2! (Volume I, page 379)
  - "The above proposition is occasionally useful." (Volume II, Page 86)
- Kurt Gödel, in a single article, proved that while formal logical systems such as those set out in Principia Mathematica may 'basically succeed,' they cannot ever completely succeed. Ever. He also had a Nice Hat.
Euclid, from five simple axioms managed to derive just about everything in geometry that exists in thirteen volumes.
- And for two thousand years people tried to show that the fifth axiom is redundant, i.e. can be derived from the other four (which are much more concise and self-evident). Then Lobachevsky and others tried assuming it's false and looking for contradictions; instead they found two other coherent systems of geometry (elliptic and hyperbolic).
Einstein rewrote everything we knew about physics by imagining what it would be like to ride a photon.
- Not to mention showing that Planck's Quantum Theory explained the photoelectric effect, and that Brownian motion proved the existence of atoms. Pretty much all of modern physics began in 1905 with a patent clerk from Switzerland.
Maxwell's equation is electrodynamics' Crowning Moment Of Awesome for This Troper. Whole of static electricity, currents, magnetism, optics, you name it - all in four neat equations.
- And for your geeky pleasure, set to music!
- This gives you an incredible idea of what it must have felt for Maxwell.
Friedrich August Kekulé solved the long baffling problem of the benzene molecule in a dream.
Most of Richard Feynman's life, from junior scientist (and amateur safe cracker) on the Manhattan Project, through co-developing Quantum Electrodynamics (the most experimentally accurate theory in the history of physics), all the way up to the aforementioned investigation of the Challenger Disaster at the end of his life (see Space Exploration, all while finding the time to experiment just for the heck of it in biology and philosophy and give several series of popular science lectures.
- Feynman breaking into every single safe at the lab where they were building the atomic bomb, just because he could.
- Most of his life? The man's last words were "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring." That's pretty hardcore.
Charles Darwin. The dude more or less compiled the bedrock upon which modern biology rests. And he didn't even know about genes!
- On a related note: Gregor Mendel. His discovery of genetics is the reason modern evolutionary biology is known as The Modern Synthesis.
  - In the mid 1800s! And it started "for the fun of the thing."
Philippe Pinel unchaining members of the Paris Asylum in 1795, after spending two years talking to them and realizing that mentally disturbed people weren't necessarily possessed by demons, and that the best method of treatment might not be bloodletting.
- The people Pinel unchained got their own Crowning Moment a few years later, when a cholera epidemic had swept Paris. The townsfolk thought that Pinel had poisoned the town well, and organized an Angry Mob to kill him, when he was rescued by the very same people he had unchained from the Paris Asylum.
Student Jessica Terry had suffered from stomach pains for eight years, and nobody could figure out why. Until she was examining some of her own intestinal tissue for science class, and diagnosed herself!
- This is so Dethroning Moment Of Suck for her doctors.
  - According to the article its a very hard one to spot.
Here's one not for the doctors, but the patients. Anyone who's taken a Psychology 101 course has probably heard of Phineas Gage, the railroad foreman who in 1848 took a 3 foot 7 inch, 13 1/2 pound iron rod through his brain and survived. What you may not know is that according to the first doctor at the scene, Gage greeted him with, "Doctor, here is business enough for you." Badass. He went on to make a full recovery, and contrary to some reports, was perfectly capable of holding down a job (stagecoach driving in Chile - more badass points) until shortly before his tragically early death in 1860.
- If by "full recovery" you mean "[The] injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior — effects said to be so profound that friends saw him as 'no longer Gage'.", then yes, I suppose he did make a "full recovery".
- An additional Crowning Moment to this story comes from the awesome power of the internet, unleashed when Jack and Beverly Wilgus of Maryland, daguerreotype collectors, uploaded a scan of one of their favorites to Flickr. They'd always thought it showed an injured whaler with a harpoon, and were disappointed to be told otherwise; then Michael Spurlock dropped by and suggested Phineas Gage. After doing some follow-up research, by midsummer 2009 it was all over the news (well, the nerdy news) : the Wilguses own the the only known image of Phineas Gage. Thanks, internets!
  - And yes, we're all thinking that he's totally hot. It's okay.
The Human Genome Project. Biology's equivalent to putting humans on the moon.
The eradication of smallpox.
Three words: Stephen Hawking's life.
All the way through the science section, and nobody's even mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci? For shame! Among MANY other inventions and accomplishments, what really blew This Troper away was that he drew the schematic for the world's first known parachute, which wasn't actually tested until 500 years later. It. Fucking. Worked.
The Lenski affair. That is all.
- To explain: Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski led an experiment in observing the E.coli bacteria over a 20-year period of time, and in the process visibly observing its evolution. When New Scientist published an article on this, it came to the attention of Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly, who given his Young Earth Creationist views was rather...skeptical. He emailed Prof. Lenski with a (rather rude) request for him to Please Elaborate...things that were already explained. Lenski replied surprisingly politely - a reply which Schlafly all but ignored. He emailed Lenski again with the same request. Lenski's response? Opening with the line "my second response will be less polite", he proceeded to give Schlafly a very lengthy (more than twice the length of the original reply) The Reason You Suck Speech, combined with a P.S., a P.P.S., a P.P.P.S., and a P.P.P.P.S., all of which were hilarious. Schlafly's attempt to discredit Professor Lenski showed exactly why it is a good idea to Beware The Nice Ones, and ironically did more to raise the profile of Lenski's research than any positive effort on the researchers' part. The full text of the correspondence can be viewed here.
Louis Pasteur, the pioneer microbiologist, when he was informed about Joseph Meister being mauled by a rabid dog and deciding with colleagues that the boy's only chance of survival against a horrible death would be his still experimental rabies vaccine. Made more awesome for the fact that Pasteur was not a licensed physician and could have been prosecuted for treating the boy. Regardless, Pasteur took the gamble and it paid off big time with the boy avoiding the disease and himself being hailed as a hero.
Banting & Best, co-discoverers of insulin. Rather than proceeding through very long and rigorous clinical tests as became the norm at the end of the 20th century, they instead took their freshly isolated compound, still somewhat impure and unrefined, to the children's ward of the Toronto General hospital, and injected it into Leonard Thompson, a 14 year old diabetic, saving his life after further refinements. After this, they moved on to a larger ward, and started injecting the children there. By the time they reached the last child, those who received the first injections were already awakening from their diabetic comas, to the joyful tears of their family. Naturally, of course, these two received the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Even better is that in Banting's hometown, there is an eternal flame that will remain lit until diabetes is cured.

Al Haynes and the other pilots of United 232. Flying a DC-10 with no hydraulics, with your only controls the throttles for two of the three engines, and getting it to an airport and almost landing it? That's some Bad Ass piloting right there.
- The crew of a DHL A300 that brought their plane to a successful landing after losing all hydraulics to a surface to air missile when leaving Baghdad airport in 2003. To top it off, turbulence caused them to veer away from the runway during the final descent, eventually causing them to come to a stop in a mine field.
  - Incidents like this are much easier to survive now, because a new fly-by-wire system was developed in response to the United 232 incident that aides pilots when using differential thrust.
Robert Pearson, pulling off a glider sideslip maneuver in Air Canada 143 in order to get his completely out of fuel (due to a number of equipment and procedural errors) Boeing 767 down to a survivable landing speed. Flying an unpowered commercial jetliner sideways in a maneuver used in sailplanes and light aircraft? That's ballsy.
- Well, he did have plenty of glider experience, but he still kept the thing in the air for an insanely long time.
And Robert Piché and Dirk Dejager, the world's longest unpowered glide in a commercial airliner combined with the first successful engine-out landing of a fly-by-wire passenger jet in Air Transat 236.
Nothing can top the ultimate piloting maneuver: an Israeli pilot in an F-15 was involved in a mid-air collision with another plane during a training mission, and was ordered by his flight evaluator to eject. He refused, still not understanding the problem, and eventually landed the plane, only to find out as he climbed out that he was missing a wing. Even better: he was immediately demoted for failure to follow the instructions of a superior officer, and then immediately ''promoted'' back to his previous rank for safely landing the aircraft. In his own words, "I would have ejected if I had known what happened." This is also a CMOA for the engineers at McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing, who designed that aircraft.
Pardo's Push. Captain Bob Pardo and his wingman Captain Earl Aman get shot up a bit during a bombing run in their F-4 Phantoms. Aman's fuel tanks were leaking so badly that he couldn't make it to airborne tankers in Laotian airspace. Pardo tells him to lower the plane's tailhook, and uses his own windscreen to push the other aircraft. The kicker? By the end, Pardo's aircraft was down to one engine. The two made it to Laos with 6,000 feet to spare, and ejected. The incident was so awesome that a JAG episode was based off of it.
JetBlue Airways Flight 292, which was landed safely with its front wheel stuck sideways. Making it even better was that many of the passengers were watching themselves on the news and knew just how screwed they might be.
The song Treetop Flier proves that Nape-Of-The-Earth flying is made of awesome.
Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of flight, conducting thousands of manned glider flights and providing others such as the Wright Brothers valuable data with which to further their own experiments. Unfortunately, he stalled, fell, and broke his spine on 09 August 1896; he died the next day. His last words?
Lilienthal: "Small sacrifices must be made!"
Landing a civilian airliner after being shot 89 times by MiG-15s.
In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese shortly after taking off from New York's La Guardia Airport, losing power in both engines. Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III made an emergency splash landing in the Hudson River that was so perfect that all 155 passengers and crew were quickly rescued without any fatalities and only a few minor injuries. He only left the plane after he walked down the length of the cabin twice to make sure no one else was aboard. He became the current definition of "awesome" overnight . Cracked wrote a ballad about the man.
Chuck Yeager becoming a single mission ace over Europe... while only firing on 3 of the 5 planes. There's a reason he's a trope.
- How about being not just the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound, but doing it with a cracked ribs?
- Or flying its successor aircraft (the X1-A) so fast that the plane became aerodynamically unstable and tumbled from the sky like a falling leaf along all three axes: plane plunged 50,000 feet in seventy seconds (From over 70,000 feet to a mere 25,000). He pulled over eight gs spinning around like a laundry machine from hell, and slammed against the canopy so hard that his helmet cracked the glass. Even after this, he brought the plane home safe. He kinda had to: the X1-A had no ejection seat. Hell, it didn't even have a door: the pilot got bolted in.
  - All that isn't what makes it his CMOA. His real CMOA is that, mere moments after nearly getting himself killed, he cracks a joke about how "They won't need to run a structural integrity test on this thing." There's a reason why there's a trope named after him. . .
Joe Kittinger of Project Excelsior in 1959 and 1960. He rode a weather balloon to the edge of space and then went for a long walk over a short threshold... three times. The seal on his pressure suit was failing the third time and he didn't tell the ground crew in order to keep them from aborting the jump.
- "Though my stabilization chute opens at 96,000 feet, I accelerate for 6,000 feet more before hitting a peak of 614 miles an hour, nine-tenths the speed of sound at my altitude." Hell yes.
Why have the Wright brothers not been mentioned yet? EVERYTHING the world over that is related to air travel or space flight is possible because of a pair of bike shop owners from Ohio.
- Um, no, because the world over other people were attempting flight with heavier-than-air contraptions. The only reason the Wright Brothers get top billing now-a-days is because America says so. Had the Wright Brothers not flown, other people would have been the first, many of them within the same year.
  - Columbus's Egg. It only seems easy now that you have seen how it works.
  - The Wright Bros. invented three-axis flight control
- Thank the Bernoullis. They (in spite of Dysfunctional Family) did the math that made human flight possible.
  - Again, thank the Wright Bros. They extensively tested Lilienthal's data on lift and air pressure in a homemade wind tunnel, and fixed the Smeaton coefficient.
How about Aloha Airlines 243, which, due to metal fatigue, had its roof in the first class section ripped off mid-flight. Despite this, the plane lands intact and there is only one flight attendant death. Even more awesome is the fact that passengers somehow managed to hold down the other flight attendants so they wouldn't suffer the same fate.

In 1856 the clipper Neptune's Car set out for San Francisco. On the way Joshua Patten, its commander, became too sick to command. His pregnant nineteen-year old wife Mary Ann Patten navigated for him all the way around Cape Horn to San Francisco, all the while still tending her husband.
Just out of Tahiti, Captain William Bligh was deposed in a mutiny on his ship Bounty and set adrift in a small boat with several of his men who had remained loyal. The boat was so full that the sides were just a couple inches above water, and many believed it to be a death sentence. Bligh proceeded to navigate the boat all the way to the British colony Timor without losing a single man during the month and a half journey.
1883, the eruption of Krakatoa. The Governor General Loudon is stuck on the water near the volcano, with all attempts to rescue it failing miserably. The ship manages to ride out over twenty feet of ash fall and two tsunamis (one of which destroyed the Fourth Point Lighthouse and most of Anjer). Not a single life on the ship lost. Its captain was later awarded by the Dutch government for the measures he took to safeguard the passengers and crew.
The Birkenhead Drill
John Paul Jones is quite possibly the most Bad Ass captain to sail while flying the Star Spangled Banner. After having his ship pounded to a floating wreck he is asked by the captain of the British warship he had engaged if he would like to surrender. His response? "I have not yet begun to fight." Then, he proceeds to capture the opposing vessel.

This cameraman who ends a potentially lethal hostage situation. Shame it turns out he was an undercover police officer pretending to be a cameraman. Still awesome, though.
An episode of "Shockwave" (a show about people surviving against the odds) in which a young police woman is shot in the shoulder through her cars window. She gets out (now wounded), with the car still in drive, and uses the car as a rolling barricade while using her pistol to exchange fire with a criminal sporting a high powered rifle. Much of this was caught on her dashboard camera.
- The officer wasn't hit, but was actually saved by a metal clipboard she had beside her. Still a CMoA though.
It’s the position of the American Bar Association that judges should start tossing some fire and brimstone into their sentencing speeches. They might look to Judge W. Wyatt McKay for inspiration. Judge McKay hears criminal cases in Trumbull County, Ohio. Recently he had kind of a loathsome guy in front of him. The creep had kidnapped, robbed and repeatedly raped a young girl who was delivering newspapers. When it was time to sentence the villain, Judge McKay said:
When you slithered out of your hole that day, (and) spewed your venom all over this defenseless 12-year old girl, you made the court's Top 10 hit list. I've had the misfortune of being involved with some of the lowest scum this county has to offer, and you've made the Top 10. In a way, the best sentence this court could give would be no sentence at all, because if you left this courtroom, I don't think you would be alive 10 minutes. You are nothing but a weed, a weed among wheat....
And when we have a weed, it's my job to eradicate the weed, because if I don't, you will choke the wheat.
Therefore, I'm going to take you off the streets for just as long as I possibly can.
(The judge then ticked off long sentence after long sentence for each of the many crimes committed against the girl.)
... It means you aren't even eligible for parole until you're 92. That leaves only one more count, aggravated robbery.... You stole this little girl's bra as a souvenir, probably to brag about it to your friends, later on.
Well, I'm going to give you a souvenir of Trumbull County justice. And that is, you will receive a maximum sentence of 10 to 25 on the aggravated robbery for the stealing of that bra. And I hope that in your last 25 years in prison that you remember that souvenir.
Get this scum out of here.

(Oh, I like that closing line.)

Also, the legendary Judge Roy Bean, back in the days of the Old West. Here is what that Hanging Judge said in about 1881 when sentencing a killer and all-purpose menace:
Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzalez, in a few short weeks, it will be spring. The snows of winter will flow away, the ice will vanish, the air will become soft and balmy.
In short, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzalez, the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass.
But you won't be there.
The rivers will run their soaring course to the sea, the timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of this imperial domain will blossom as the rose.
Still, you won't be there to see.
From every treetop, some wild woods songster will carol his mating song, butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happily as it pursues its accustomed vocation, the gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild grasses and all nature, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzalez, will be glad but you.
You won't be there to enjoy it because I command the sheriff of the county to lead you away to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a knotting bough of some sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead. And then, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzalez, I further command that such officer retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering son of a ***.
- Sadly, his speech feels more than a little empty (and more than a little bit racist) considering that he was willing to overturn the sentence on Paddy O'Rourke who had been found guilty of shooting a Chinese laborer. Having consulted his lawbook he concluded that homicide constituted the killing of a human being, and that he could find no law against the killing of a Chinaman. This change in attitude was no doubt fuelled in part by the angry Irish men that had surrounded the courthouse.
The actions of Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Liviu Librescu, Kevin P. Granata and Henry Lee during the Virginia Tech massacre. When this troper was an irritating and feckless student, I never dreamed any of my professors took the whole "in loco parentis" thing seriously.
- There was one incident a while ago in which a man rescued a woman from her abductors with a sword. Really!
One of the crowning moments in British broadcasting has to be Radio Caroline's defiance of the British anti-pirate radio laws in August 1967, which closed down all of its rivals. Despite being subsequently forced off the air a number of times, the station continued broadcasting from a ship until 1990, and today survives as a legal digital station.
Baggage handler and Glaswegian Native John Smeaton going out on a cigarette break and seeing two terrorists ram raid Glasgow airport. They drove a land-rover full of gas cylinders into the main entrance of the airport, but it failed to properly detonate. They stumbled out of the car and John Smeaton beat the living crap out of them, despite the fact they were on fire. He was later quoted "Glasgow doesn't accept this. This is Glasgow; we'll set aboot ye." He now has his own fan club and has been honoured by the queen.
This troper remembers seeing a story on the news here in Toronto about this corner store owner who was held up by a robber with a bat. The plan would have worked, except there was one thing the robber didn't know: The store owner was a ex-South Korean soldier. He jumped the counter, smashed the robber's face in, grabbed his bat from him, and bashed it over him as he ran off.
Alex McIlveen was a normal cabdriver in Scotland when, all of a sudden, a terrorist attempted to suicide bomb himself at an airport. McIlveen promptly exited his cab, ran over to the flaming, yelling terrorist, and kicked him so hard in the balls he he fucking tore his fucking tendon in his foot!
The video of a police officer retaining straight face while the person he pulled over is freaking out? That's the cop's Crowning Moment of Awesome. After several minutes of having every obscenity possible screamed at him by a guy so angry that his high-pitched flailing is making his vehicle rock, the trooper calmly watches him drive off, still screaming, with the best reply ever.
"...Bye."
One day in Houston, a pimp is slapping around one of the prostitutes who works for him. A bystander sees this and attempts to intervene to get the pimp to stop. The pimp is so outraged by this man's interference that he literally tears his clothing trying to get to the man (the prostitute, fearing the consequences, tries to hold him back) and charges towards the bystander with the intention of doing some serious damage to him. Unfortunately, no one's told the pimp that the bystander happens to be a black belt in karate... who floors him with one jab, knocking him clean out. When he recovers, the pimp has to be helped across the street, being literally unable to stand without someone supporting him.
Trude Lacklandia, one of the first female knights in the Society for Creative Anachronism, was walking home alone late at night from a feast in the East Kingdom, aka New York City, when a mugger accosted her. "Give me your money," he demanded. "I'd rather not," she replied. "I've got six inches of steel that says you will," he answered, waving a knife under her nose. Trude reached under her woolen cloak for her (mostly ceremonial) broadsword and answered: I'll see your six and raise you thirty-five. The mugger ran. And yes, it really happened; there's even a song about it.
- A similar line ("raise you thirty") is also attributed to Jerry Pournelle with a sword-cane in Mexico. Who knows, maybe he gave Sir Trude the idea.
- The SCA has a lot of Crowning Moment of Awesome stories - not surprising, seeing as many SCA activities involve both bladed weapon proficiency (and ownership) and hold to a code of honor and chivalry. You can read up on some stories about them here, here, and here. Try Googling "Blood for Odin" for even more awesome.
Story remembered from the news: An old Texas woman and her granddaughter were alone in their house when a burglar broke in. The granddaughter called 911. Granny pulled out a revolver, and opened fire, wounding the burglar. Later, on the news, the grandmother apologized – for swearing during the incident.
A teenager is alone at home when a burglar breaks into the house. He retreats to his closet, and calls 911. When the robber enters his room, the teenager lunges from the closet and proceeds to beat the ever loving crap out of the burglar with a baseball bat.
A man in LA tries to hijack a van...filled with members of the Florida International University Judo Club. By the time police arrived, the man was unable to stand up under his own power.
- That looks more like a Dethroning Moment Of Suck for the "poor" hijacker.
It's been a while, so forgive me if the details are fudged. Three criminals, two with shotguns tried to mug a man. Turns out he was a marine, and had a knife on him. When the dust was settled, two of the thugs were dead and the other severely wounded. Never bring a shotgun to a knife fight.
Two burglars try to rob Scottish soccer player Duncan Ferguson. The end result, the burglars get their asses handed to them. One of the burglars spent three days in the hospital.
- Did I mention he had four convictions for assault and a conviction for Grievous Bodily Harm because he headbutted a policeman?
A pickpocket attempted to rob a member of the US track and field team (while they were being interviewed by a Spanish film crew). Needless to say, you do not successfully flee from one of the fastest men in the world on foot.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart who risks contempt-of-court charges by suspending evictions on October 8, 2008 due to concern "that many of the people being evicted are renters who were unaware that their landlords have been failing to pay their mortgages."
The FBI gets a CMOA for taking the underground cybercrime forum DarkMarket and turning into the biggest gathering place for criminals to sell stolen identities, credit cards, and banking logins in the entire world. Imagine, managing to get every cybercriminal in the world doing business on a FBI-RUN site. Even when they closed the site in preparation for sweeping arrests, they get another for closing the site with this message:
"It is apparent that this forum ... is attracting too much attention from a lot of the world services (agents of FBI, SS, and Interpol). I guess it was only time before this would happen. It is very unfortunate that we have come to this situation, because ... we have established DM as the premier English speaking forum for conducting business. Such is life. When you are on top, people try to bring you down."
How about Janet Lane of London, UK? The 68-year-old grandmother was minding her own business when these three guys grabbed her purse and ran off with it. You really have to feel sorry for them; Mrs Lane happened to be a former 1950s cross-country champion, chased after the dudes, AND got her purse back. That is one badass granny. (How she describes the incident? "I was delighted to get it back. I haven't run like that since I was a girl. It must have been a bit of a sight.")
Another one from the UK- two men are trying to break into a jewelery shop in Richmond, London. Everyone is just standing there when an 84-year-old man walked up to them and removed one of their balaclavas. They legged it- he handed his business card to someone else, as he had to get to an appointment.
There's Clarence Darrow, who represented defendants in fifty murder trials, only one of them resulted in an execution. During one trial, the Leopold and Loeb case, he delivered a two day speech.
- But his real CMoA came in the trial of John Scopes, aka the "Monkey Trial". He defended Scopes of the crime of teaching evolution over creation in a school, and, knowing full well that it was pretty much a kangaroo court (especially after most of his evidence and defense witness testimony was thrown out), called the prosecuting attorney, William Jennings Bryan, to the stand to basically badger him about his Biblical knowledge, and then, when he knew it was a lost cause, asked the jury to convict his client just so they could get to the appeal (which was also unsuccessful).
For further lawyerly awesome, kindly direct your gaze to Temple Lea Houston. Considered one of the best trial lawyers of his era, he spoke ten languages, was a crack pistol shot, and was known for his flamboyant personality. There are a number of stories from his life which would have been CMOAs for a lesser man (discharging a gun into the courtroom ceiling, then declaring a mistrial when the jury fled outside, claiming they had not been properly sequestered), but his pinnacle was The Soiled Dove Plea, which has as much claim to being the perfect closing argument as any other you can name. The best part? He wasn't the assigned counsel, having taken the case only a few hours before (in some iterations of the story, mere minutes before the trial was due to commence) and delivered the speech more-or-less extemporaneously.
A grandmother who ran a vegetable stand in Florida was the victim of an attempted robbery by a young man wielding a baseball bat. Her gun was out of reach, so she grabbed the next best thing: A two-foot-long zucchini, which she used to knock him out. She still has the (broken) zucchini as a souvenir.
Some carjackers stole the car belonging to one Fred Rogers. Upon finding out, a few days later, exactly whose car they had stolen, they gave it back and apologized. He found it parked back where it had been taken from, with a note inside that said "If we'd known it was yours we would never have taken it."
- Clearly, they knew their better.
A tiny female convenience store clerk is menaced by a crook with a gun. What does she do? whip out an '''axe''' almost as big as she is and chases him off.
A couple of convenience store clerks, tired of being constantly robbed, decide to do something about it. They decide to put in a flying wall of death in the counter. At 0:55, a particularly dumb criminal takes it to the trachea.
Gwyneth Jones. 86 years old, recovering from a broken hip, she catches a burglar in her kitchen. So she beats him with her walking stick, makes him sit on a stool, and basically intimidates him into staying right there until the police arrive.
Allan Kieta, 49 years old, wrestles a 25-year-old burglar to the ground. He then drags him into the kitchen and holds him at the point of a kitchen knife while he calls 911. Also, Kieta is COMPLETELY BLIND.
The case of Ken McElroy. Here was a guy who rustled livestock, raped little girls, intimidated the authorities, escaped conviction for his numerous crimes by threatening witnesses, and in general was a complete and total bastard to the small town of Skidmore, Missouri for years. In 1981, he was convicted of attempted murder after he shot a 70-year-old grocer with a shotgun, and was released on bond for 25 days, during which time he announced to the patrons of a tavern how he would finish the job on the grocer. A hearing over this incident fell through, and the only suggestion given for dealing with McElroy was a neighborhood watch. Shortly after, several local men found McElroy bragging and waving his gun again, and someone fatally shot him as he got back into his truck. McElroy's wife (one of the women he had raped years before) identified the killer, but since none of the 35 witnesses would back up her statement and a federal investigation turned up nothing, no one was prosecuted. The case remains unsolved.
Any police officer who has been awarded the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor. This is the police equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
A Thief breaks into a van. He finds it to be filled with gasoline cans and what looks like the wiring for a bomb. Rather than leaving it in the crowded residential area he found it in, he personally drove the van 15 blocks to a deserted pier before calling the police. Balls of Chrome Steel.
Real life Vigilante Man Bernhard Goetz shot five local street toughs menacing him on a 2 Train during the height of the New York City crime epidemic. A jury refused to convict him on anything more than a weapons related crime and he became a local hero.
Two involving young women from Japan - both in elevators. One was about to be abducted, and manages to not only fend off, but beat down her assailant, who looks to be about a foot taller than she is. The other is the well-known Elevator Suplex woman, who... well, just watch the vid. Although the second one may be a commercial excerpt.
This guy. Johns Hopkins is well known for producing doctors and nurses. The bozo who screwed with one of their students needed a morgue. I believe we've found the eighth Samurai.
A young pickpocket is at a convenience store, and spots an elderly man waiting in the checkout line. Thinking gramps will be an easy target, the pickpocket sneaks up and attempts to pull the man's wallet from his pocket. Instantly, the old man grabs the punk and starts wailing on him, without mercy. Turns out that the old man was a former marine, a retired iron worker, and a two-time Golden Glove boxing champion. Don't mess with the old folks, future career criminals of America.
Similarly, a 84 year old World War Two Canadian Navy veteran in Toronto, along with two Legion volunteers in their 60's, fought off a thief who tried to steal proceeds from poppy sales. Read the full story here
A legal one: David Boies was best known (before 2000) for a particular cross examination he once performed. The case boiled down to a charge of bribery against his clients, Westinghouse. A full day was set aside for his cross examination of one witness, a GE executive who had testified that GE's bid to build the plant was better than Westinghouse. Two minutes into this cross examination, Boies asks if the executive had read the Westinghouse contract. To everybody's surprise (including Boies's) the witness said no. Boies's response? "No further questions", and immediately sitting down.
Pretty much the entirety of Socrates' Defense. Insulting almost everyone at the trial, not giving a damn about you own life compared to your principles? Awesome.
Jack Thompson's disbarment. And There Was Much Rejoicing.
You think that being a martial artist will save you from the law? Wrong. Michael Xue was on the run for murdering his wife in New Zealand and then abandoning his little daughter at Melbourne's Southern Cross Station before fleeing to America. That is, until a group of six Chinese-Americans recognised his photo from a Chinese-language newspaper. They tried to alert the police but they couldn't get their message across. Their reaction? Screw it, they'd take him down themselves. When police finally arrived, they found the so-called 'martial arts master' hogtied with his own pants and belt and sat on by six guys.

Giles Corey's last words. Accused of being a witch, Corey refused to plead and grant legitimacy to the accusation. In accordance with the area's laws, he was made to lie down in a pit while heavy stones were piled on top of him. He lay like this for three days until finally crushed by the weight of the stones. While he died, he was periodically asked what his plea was. Corey's response? "More weight."
- One of the few times This Troper approved of his high school history textbooks' judgments: "So died Giles Corey, New England to the bone." The words "New England," in his opinion, could have been replaced with "Bad Ass" with no loss, and he isn't even from New England.
- Another Salem Witch Trials victim, I believe it was Sarah Good, also had epic last words, something along the lines of "I am not a witch but if I were I would curse you and your entire family."
When someone asked Edsger Dijkstra — the father of structural programming and most of the modern data structures — about immortality, he replied:
"If 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself: 'Dijkstra would not have liked this', well that would be enough immortality for me."
- He got it.
Lawrence Oates, of the Scott Expedition to the South Pole: "I'm just going outside. I may be some time."
H.M. Stanley: "Dr. Livingston, I presume?"
- Apropos of that famous line, this troper just read about Fridtjof Nansen. This guy noticed that ships would get trapped in frozen ice floes while exploring the Arctic Circle, so he commissioned a ship DESIGNED to withstand the pressure, sailed it as far north as possible (while living a, by his own description, "sybaritic" lifestyle including electric lights powered by a windmill built into the ship). When the ship can go no further, he and one crewmate get out and head north with a dog sled team. They successfully make it farther north than anyone ever, and then Fridtjof Nansen TURNS AROUND AND HEADS HOME because he promised his wife he wouldn't get his fool self killed. He and his companion spend five winter months on an island hunting whales to live, until spring comes and they can travel farther south, whereupon they run into a British explorer who asks, "Wait... are you Fridtjof Nansen?" Nansen makes it home to a hero's welcome. Not one person of his crew died in this expedition (although a stowaway ended up having a foot amputated for frostbite) and the ship made it back to port one week after Nansen did. Nansen then spends the rest of his life as a statesman and scholar for Norway, earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922. The ship that was built to his specifications later carried Roald Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole. This troper never heard of Nansen until yesterday, but she is in awe of this guy. "Clangs when he walks" does not EVEN begin to cover it.
After stealing an US$ 10,000 statue from swindler Bernie Madoff, the thieves returned it with a note attached which read: "Bernie the Swindler, Lesson: Return stolen property to rightful owners. Signed by — The Educators.".
John Carpenter's million-dollar win on Day 13 of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (US), and the first million-dollar win on any US game show in history. Fourteen questions without using a single lifeline or showing signs of weakness. On the final question, he looks Regis in the eye, chuckles a bit, and asks to use Phone-A-Friend to call his dad.
John: "Hey, dad. I just wanted to let you know that I'm gonna win the million dollars."
Rev. Al Sharpton's eulogy at Michael Jackson's memorial.
A scuba diver salvaged some cast-iron cannons from a warship that sunk in 1781. Apparently, his permits weren't in order, so he got a letter from the state government requesting that he turn over the "brass cannons sunk in 1785" to them. His reponse "I do not, nor have I ever, owned any BRASS cannons from 1785."
Behold: Adam Sessler takes down the annoying fanboys everyone hates, by name!
Billy Mays publically challenging rival pitchman Vince Offer to a showdown.
A freedman named Jourdan Anderson wrote this letter to his ex-master, when said ex-master wanted to hire him back. Here is a scan of the newspaper it was originally printed in.
St. Theresa of Avila (or is it Liseux? I always mix those two up). There's a story about her This Troper loves. One night she was woken up from sleep, and looked up. Abover the (or a) devil floated, making horrific faces at her. Her response? "Oh. It's YOU." And she rolled over and fell back asleep.
Some of the Graffiti found in the lost city of Pompeii is typical graffiti stuff, but the very first one is, in this troper's opinion, the best coming-out speech in history:
Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!
In 2007, the former CEO of Norbourg, Vincent Lacroix, was prosecuted for diverting up to 115 millions of dollars for personal interests, ruining many investors. The Crowning Moment came when tv joker Jean-René Dufort bought a costume of Norbourg's former mascot and used it to humiliate Lacroix while on his way to the trial.

Okay folks, here's the story that beats them all. You have your stereotypical African village; Chiwe village in Malawi. Basically a Crapsack World; fresh off a famine AND a bout of cholera that kills thousands. A land full of disease, superstition, and not a whole lot else. Most people in those circumstances wither and die. However William Kamkwamba built a windmill that generated the first ever steady electric power in that part of Africa....from scratch...from garbage found in a dumpster. Yes, ladies and gents, he did it in a third-world hellhole. WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!! Tony Stark couldn't hold an arc reactor to this kid. The villagers called him mad. Al Gore called him a hero. We call him a Bad Ass.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Enough said.
Arland D Williams Jr,The 6th Passenger. "He was the best we can do."
Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, began his expedition at the same time Robert Falcon Scott's English expedition was preparing to head to the Pole. In fairness, he sent them a telegram. What that telegram said is the crowning moment: "Am going south. Amundsen." That is all.
- And let's not forget how Amundsen died trying to save a guy who had snubbed him.
It can be argued that anyone who has ever succeeded in climbing Mount Everest had their CMOA right there, but special mention goes to Erik Weihenmayer, who was the first blind person to scale Mount Everest.
- How about someone who climbs mountains for a living, is halfway up Everest, starts suffering from altitude sickness, loses several fingers and toes from frostbite, is left for dead, then 12 hours later is found by another team, whom he greeted with "I imagine you're surprised to see me here."
- Tenzing Norgay Sherpa. The whole Sherpa tribe is very awesome. They were the ones that carried the mountains of gear up Everest ON FOOT as well as providing some of the guides. But even the Sherpas consider Tenzing Norgay awesome. He was born a Tibetan serf. But he ran away to get a job as a mountain guide. He was one of the first two to scale Everest. The best known in the West is Sir Edmund Hillary. But his partner was Tenzing Norgay. Especially since neither of them would never tell anyone which of them actually set foot on the summit first.
- Swedish adventurer and all-around badass Göran Kropp got on a bicycle, biked from Sweden to Mt Everest (a trip of about 8000 miles), and climbed it alone without any bottled oxygen. Then he climbed back down, and BIKED HOME.
  - Slight amendment: He climbed the mountain, stopped 300 feet short of the summit, descended, went back up three weeks later, and then biked home. That's about 35,000 feet in two climbs. Oh, and did I mention the second try was just 12 days after the 1996 Everest Disaster?
A 73-year-old Kenyan farmer is attacked by a leopard. What does he do? He drops his machete, shoves his hand into the leopard's mouth, and rips its tongue out. Yeah.
- Keep in mind how strong leopards' jaws are. Lions, they have to go for the throat. Tigers, they're backstabbing bastards that go from behind. Leopards go from anywhere, wrestle they're prey down, and crush it's skull. They can drag 300 pounds of dead weight into a tree, and they weigh about as much as a human. leopards are fucking bad ass .And that guys ripped one's tongue out with his bare hands.
After Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance was trapped in the ice on an expedition to the South Pole, he and his men had to survive for months in Antarctica. Every single one of them survived to get back to civilization, though one of them (a stowaway) had to have his foot amputated. They also went on an 800-mile journey through the stormy Southern Ocean in a small boat, surviving a storm that sank a 500-ton ship. And then they hiked over the mountains of South Georgia, which had never been climbed or mapped.
Paul Rusesabagina saved 1,268 Rwandans (both Tutsis and moderate Hutus) from being massacred during the Rwandan Genocide by using his connections as a hotel manager. Bad Ass? I think so.
Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson. During a mapping excursion in 1912, one of the men — and nearly all of their food — disappeared down a crevasse. The two survivors had to cover the 300 miles back to base without enough to eat. They killed their sled dogs one by one, making a point of eating the "nourishing" livers, not knowing that a husky's liver concentrates deadly quantities of Vitamin A. They ate thirty toxic doses apiece in the belief it was good for them. Mawson's companion died. Mawson trudged on. He found the soles of his feet had literally come loose. He fell partway down another crevasse, climbed out, fell again, and climbed out again. And he made it back alive and then went on more expeditions.
The humor website Cracked gives us the 7 People Who Cheated Death (Then Kicked It In The Balls) article. It's Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- As is The Seven Most Badass Man vs. Beast Showdowns. It starts with a nine year-old boy who rescues a little girl from a pitbill...with a Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu chokehold. It gets even better from there.
One man who was bitten by a poisonous snake responded by biting off the snake's head, slitting its body lengthwise, and using it as a tourniquet.
Greg Le Noir, who punched out a shark that was trying to eat his dog.
Rasputin, not for living one of the most ludicrous lives ever, but dying one of the most awesome deaths ever. He was poisoned with enough cyanide to kill about a dozen people, was shot in his back, and blacked out. He then woke up, proceeded to strangle a man, and was shot three more times, and here's where the story goes a little bit hazy. All accounts state that he was eventually dumped in the Neva river, but some say that Rasputin proceeded to walk outside of the complex, was shot several more times, and eventually blacked out again. He was then dumped in the Neva river, where he meet his death...by hypothermia. After four days!
- That may be rumor though.
- On the subject of Rasputin: rumor has it when they cremated Rasputin's body, they neglected to cut the tendons in his body. The heat of the furnace caused his muscles to tighten, making Rasputin's body sit up inside the furnace. If that happened, the coroner could have built a second furnace from all the bricks he would have shat.
- Also on the topic of Rasputin: the guy has an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to his penis. Is that isn't a crowning moment, I don't know what is.
- Wow, no wonder he made such a great villain in the animated Anastasia movie.
- One of the post-revolution Russians had an awesome death too. Leon Trotsky, while exiled to Mexico, was snuck up upon by Leo Mercader. Mercader buried an ice axe into the back of Trotsky's skull. This just pissed Trotsky off. He stood up from his desk, axe in head, and spit on Mercader, then he wrestled him to the ground. He lived for well over a day afterward.
  - And when his bodyguards arrived in the room he told them "Don't kill him! This man has a story to tell"
A man in British Columbia manages to kill an attacking Black Bear. With a stick and one handed. Can anyone say "balls of sheer, utter mass"?
The third "Where the Hell is Matt?" video. Demilitarized zone, Korea. Also, Matt getting about everyone in the world to dance with him over the video, whereas he was essentially alone in the first few videos.
- Also, East Jerusalem, West Bank and Tel Aviv, Israel in the same video. The man could be one of those UN Goodwill ambassadors. I move to nominate him for it.
Brain surgeon keeps working through heart attack.
Firefighter dresses up as Spider-Man to coax autistic child off of ledge.
- More like Crowning Moment of Awwwwww-some.
First wheelchair backflip ever.
On May 6, 1975, an F4 tornado hit Omaha NE. There's several CMOAs associated with the storm, but I'd like to nominate OFD Captain Robert Rockwell and OPD Officer David Campbell for chasing the twister while it was on the ground in order to radio warnings ahead of them. At least once during the chase, the tornado was roughly 100 FEET away from Campbell's cruiser.
The people of Eyam, summer of 1665. A man dies of the plague in their village, infected by a parcel of cloth sent from London. What do they do? They voluntarily quarantine their entire town for sixteen months, until the outbreak burns itself out. Three-quarters of the inhabitants died, giving their lives for who knows how many others in the local area.
- They got food by placing coins they had soaked in vinegar on a stone that marked the boundary of Eyam. People from the next town over would collect the money and use it to buy food and medicine, and leave the goods on the stone for the people of Eyam to collect.
- Unfortunately, had they left in the beginnings, more would have survived since the fleas carrying the plague then wouldn't have had anyone to infect. But they didn't know that, so it remains Awesome.
Granuaile. Her entire life. 16th century Irish sea captain and female pirate. Among other things, she divorced her husband but kept his castle; she defeated Algerian pirates-about a day after giving birth aboard ship. Oh, yeah, and she sailed to England for her amazing meeting with Queen Elizabeth.
Marcus Schrenker. After his life went downstream when people caught him for fraud and his wife left him, he took his private plane, and crashed it on purpose to fake his death. He survived, and went to a shack not far from the crash site where he had planted a stolen motorcycle a day earlier. Very James Bond.
- He was caught not too long after that, though.
- The Daily Show applied Fridge Logic to this by noticing that he ejected while in flight, meaning he left the plane to crash where it may, potentially into people on the ground. Not so awesome anymore.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Nick Popovich, extreme repo man.
Tom Wanyandie, a 78 year old Papa Wolf extraordinaire who went completely nuts on a literal Mama Bear attacking his son, beating her up with his walking stick while cursing all the while in Cree. When the bear tried to bite, he jammed the stick right down her throat. The son survived after surgery, while Tom only suffered a broken hand (From punching the bear after his stick broke).
Philip Zimmerman. He's the guy who invented PGP, an email encryption software. Back then exporting encryption software was illegal. You know what he did? He made a book with the source code in it, sold the books, and the people who bought it scanned the pages and reassembled the program, getting around the whole "illegal" business because of the first amendment to the US constitution.
"Tatsuma" of Fark.com. Since a media blackout is preventing almost every mainstream news source from reporting on what's going on in Iran, Tatsuma's daily updates, timeline and crash course on Iranian politics are invaluable. He deserves a Pulitzer for his hard work.
Frank Abagnale, Jr., a man whose early life is best known by being chronicled in the film Catch Me If You Can. He's a confidence trickster who, over the course of several years, passed over 2.5 million US dollars in fraudulent cheques, and now works for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations. As a security consultant and lecturer.
Two Frenchwomen and an American woman created a cooking school in France in the late 1950s. In 1961, l'École des Trois Gourmandes ("the school of the three happy eaters") published a cookbook called Mastering the Art of French Cooking, one of the first books published in English to go beyond simple French recipes into the actual techniques. Said book would make "gourmet" cooks out of people who grew up on meatloaf and TV dinners and go on to drastically alter the course of American cuisine for years to come, made a tidy little sum for Simone Beck, and converted a former OSS operative with ovaries of steel and little to no culinary experience into JULIA EFFING CHILD, the single greatest TV chef of all time.
The Canadian Caper. You're welcome.
A man named Dustin Britton fought off a mountain lion. With. A. Chainsaw
A guy by the name of Adam Green takes Otakon 2009 by storm...by donning his kilt, grabbing his bagpipes, and playing a march, that sees half of the attendees following him through the convention.
Both a CMoA and a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: At the AVCon 2009 closing ceremony, convenor Mitchell Chapman auctioned getting his head shaved for charity (the winner got to do the shaving). When the bidding reached about $150, the committee make a collective bid by pooling cash and dropping it on the stage. Suddenly, everyone in the audience heads down to the stage and starts throwing money on the pile. A total of over $800 was raised in this manner.
Lisa Potts, a kindergarten teacher who saved her class from a man with a machete by shielding them with her own body, not to mention staying outside to get children in, with her arms almost cut off. She is the reason there were no deaths in the incident. Rightfully awarded the Gerorge medal for being a massively badass heroine teacher.
Emperor Joshua Norton basically lived a never-ending CMOA after declaring himself Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico. He printed his own money which was accepted at most San Francisco restaurants. After being arrested for vagrancy, the chief of police apologized, let him walk free, and then Emperor Norton granted an imperial pardon to the arresting officer. After this, all police officers in San Francisco would salute him on the streets. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The guy even managed a CMOA or two while dead. That whole Bay Bridge thing? His idea.
- The highpoint was during a race riot. A lynch mob with a bad attitude was hunting for some Chinese, to do what lynch mobs do. His Majesty got in their path (not a healthy thing to do to folks with violent intent) and simply recited the Lord's Prayer at them until they dispersed in shame. Not at all bad for a man most agree had long before lost his wits.
- Emperor Norton is fondly remembered as a saint by Discordians. That alone should indicate how awesome the man was.
  - Notably: He's the only real person who is a Discordian saint.
  - Technically, anybody can ordain a Discordian saint, as This Troper has done on at least two occasions, so he's not the only one. Although his sainthood the one of the only things that Discordians all agree on and that, in and of itself, is quite impressive.
- He also invented the automatic railroad switch, but nobody gave him funding to patent it.
- His funeral train when he died was two miles long—pretty impressive for a fellow who lived almost in poverty and was mostly just a kook. 30,000 people packed the streets to give their farewells. Marked by a total eclipse of the sun.
- Also so awesome he attracted the attention of Neil Gaiman, and was thus featured in the Sandman series.
  - His life was so awesome that Neil Gaiman's story on him is simply a biography with no embellishments, and yet it still fit in the mystical and magical world of The Sandman.
- His job in a census report was given as "Emperor." I'd love to have seen the look on the census-taker's face.
Rukhsana Kauser, an 18 year old peasant girl in India who was targeted by the notorious terrorist Abu Osama, who came to get her with five of his men. Assisted by her older brother, she cracked Osama's skull against the wall and then completely slaughtered him with his own gun. They then fought off the rest of the men, wounding two of them before they retreated.
Aron Ralston. A mountain climber and canyoneer, he was rappelling in Blue John Canyon near Moab, alone, when a boulder pinned his right arm against the wall. After five days without success at removing the boulder, he then proceeds to amputate his right forearm and hand to get free of the boulder, then rappelled, one armed, sixty-five feet down to the canyon floor. He became an instant celebrity, and you'd think that the incident would end his mountaineering career. Two years later, however, he became the first man to climb all of Colorado's 14K peaks solo in the dead of winter. He's climbing Mount Everest in 2010.
- Your Mileage May Vary having lived near the area I've heard the story a hundred times. One of the key elements? He went alone, without telling anyone where he was going.
Kim Munley, while wounded, takes down the Fort Hood shooter.
Lest we forget: Ken Thompson, who created UNIX in three weeks: one for the kernel, one for the compiler, one for the command shell. All on a PDP-7 run on paper tape.
- And, in another CMoA, Linus Torvalds, who doesn't use tape drives or CD-Rs: he uploads his source code and the Internet backs it up for him.
The attack on the London Underground on the 7th of July 2005 was one of the worst terrorism attacks to ever hit the United Kingdom. Suicide bombers on multiple trains and at least one bus, people trapped and injured in dark tunnels beneath the city, people missing left, right and centre. Like every terrorist attack, the aftermath was a scene of confusion, fear and sadness, which will probably be felt for decades. So what did the British people do in response to this suicide attack against innocent civilians? They got their Badass out of storage where it had been since about the Second World War, rolled up their sleeves and got to freaking work. People in the streets were grouping together to help out complete strangers, the mostly unhurt were walking, sometimes for miles, to get out of the underground tunnels (there's one particuarly tear jerking tale of a man sitting with another in a carriage as he died), rows of buses were lined up to act as makeshift hospitals because there was no time to get anyone to the real one... It was a horrible, horrible mess, and yet the whole time, beneath the anger and fear, there was an air of resilience, telling the world that scared as we were, we were not going to be terrorised. Whenever this troper thinks about how disillusioning, rotten and outright dense the country she calls home can be sometimes, she reminds herself of things like this. Her country sucks sometimes, but be damned if we're not strong little blighters.
- What's more, less than 24 hours after the attacks, people were queueing at the bus stop where the events of a previous day had seen a double-decker shredded. Takes 'Keep Calm And Carry On' and Stiff Upper Lip to legendary levels.
Operation Yellow Ribbon. See, us Canucks can have our day in the spotlight too.
This Troper cannot believe that nobody mentioned Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked during the 9/11 attack. Even though the hijackers demanded the passengers and flight attendants to remain quiet and threatened them with bombs, the passengers bravely resisted them. When they learned about the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, the passengers staged a revolt. They managed to (most believe) stop the plane before it reached its intended target, which was thought to be the White House or the U.S Capitol, even though they knew that they wouldn't survive. It sends shivers down your spine when you think about the bravery in that act.
- And if that isn't [Bad Ass] enough, then the last audible words of Todd Beamer should get ya real good.
  "Are you ready guys? Let's roll."
Northwest flight 253. A terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb in his underwear. A Dutch guy named Schuringa grabbed the explosive from between Umar's legs and tossed it away, getting his hands burned. Crew members put out the fire, and Schuringa dragged Umar to the front of the plane, stripped off his clothes to check for other explosives, and helped a crew member handcuff him. Passengers applauded as Schuringa walked back to his seat. The Dutch prime minister phoned him the day after the attack to thank him, a member of Parliment suggested he deserves a national honor, and according to one newspaper, the Queen herself expressed her gratitude.
This troper read of a village in Afghanistan, some missionaries were helping them out when Taliban came and tried to take them from the village forcefully, the villagers proceeded to throw rocks and sticks at them, and then wheeled out a fully loaded heavy machine gun, and opened fire, chasing them off. To make it even better, the village leader said they did it because the Missionaries were their guests, and to let the Taliban take them would be inhospitable.

Very geeky one: In a game of the trading card game Magic, Guillame Wafo-Tapa is about to lose. He has nothing in his hand and has only one chance to pull out a victory. He then draws one card sight unseen and pays for the card it has to be, then flips it onto the table to reveal. . . that he just pulled off a called shot that will never be forgotten in the history of this game. I believe we've found the King of Games.
For Marvel vs. Capcom 2 fans - this video at 2:03, from a money match between Daniel "Clockw0rk" Maniago and Justin "Dark Prince" Jordan. For the backstory information, Clockw0rk was a longtime player, and Justin called him out, calling him a "washed up veteran". So a money match was arranged and everyone threw their money into the pot. While Clockw0rk won at first, it seems like he lost momentum early on. But this was the moment in which he got it back and never let go. His Strider threw a bomb which Justin's Cable neglected to notice when he shot a laser beam, and Clockw0rk pointed at it on the screen when it exploded and killed him. Clockw0rk ended up winning the whole thing.
Sony of America refused to let developers release 2D games for the original Play Station in the NA region... until Capcom refused to release a sequel to Resident Evil in return. They changed that policy in a hurry.
One man by the name of Bernie Peng, reprogrammed his girlfriend's favourite computer game, Bejeweled, so that when she reached a certain score a ring and a marriage proposal would appear on screen. She of course said yes. For more go here.

This troper gained a lot of respect for fifteenth-century Italian religious dissident Girolamo Savonarola when he read a partial transcript of Savonarola's excommunication ceremony:
Benedict Christopher de Opera, Bishop of Vasona: I hereby expel you from the Church Militant and Triumphant.
Savonarola: From the Church Militant, perhaps; not from the Church Triumphant. That is not within your competence.
Progressive evangelist Tony Campolo would often begin his speeches thus: "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."
The funeral of Pamela Waechter, the woman killed in the 2006 shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation headquarters, was a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the entire Greater Seattle community. This troper attended, and ended up sitting in front of Greg Nickels, the mayor of Seattle. In addition to the mayor, there were Christian priests, Orthodox rabbis (who would normally not attend a Reform service), and Muslim leaders (the man who killed Waechter was Muslim). Everyone was there to show their sorrow at this woman's death, and their support of her family and community.
Probably the most amazing rescue in American history was of the Martin and Willie Handcart Companies, Mormon refugees on their way to Utah back in the 1850s. They got off to a late start, and winter came early that year, with blizzards stranding hundreds of people with minimal supplies and shelter 500 miles east of the Salt Lake Valley. When some scouts came across them and brought news to Salt Lake, Brigham Young was just preparing for the general conference of the church, an event that lasts two days over multiple sessions. This one lasted a few minutes. He explained the situation, told the congregation that living their religion was more important than talking about it, and that he wanted a rescue party put together that very day, and dismissed the conference. The first wave of rescuers left less than 24 hours later, with 16 wagons full of supplies. They headed out into a treacherous early winter, crossing half the the Rocky Mountains and making their way to modern-day Wyoming and back with the refugees.
- One of the obstacles that had to be overcome was the Sweetwater River, which was two feet deep, 90-120 feet across, and choked with ice. Several men spent most of November 4, 1856 ferrying carts and survivors across the river. Many would suffer from the effects of the cold water in blizzard conditions for the rest of their lives.

A freakin' DUCK got one a couple of years ago in Britain. A hunter shot it, took the body and left it in a freezer for two days. When he came to take it out, it was moving its head up and down. He then operated on it to remove the bullet when its heart stopped twice on the operating table. It made a full recovery.
Bees, taken down with AIRSOFT. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO7GR2TmqgY The best part? They were originally going to use REAL guns.
- It just goes to show that there is very little in this world that cannot be solved with the application of a Tokyo Marui FAMAS.
Leo the dog refused to abandon a litter of kittens he was protecting, and risked his life to save them from a fire.
A dog survives for four months off the coast of Australia, by swimming through shark-infested waters to reach an island where she hunted goats for food.
Pierre the Bison. In the early 1900s, some Mexican officials visited an army fort in South Dakota and loudly declared that bison were wimpy and that a Mexican fighting bull could one-shot a bison any day of the week. So a fight was arranged, with a bison named Pierre entering the ring and promptly curling up to rest on the ground. The bull came in, fighting-mad, and charged Pierre, who took it head on and did nothing. The Mexican bull tried this three more times before becoming so freaked out by his ineffectiveness that he tried to jump out of the ring. Two more bulls get brought in and the same thing happens. Finally, a fourth bull gets brought in and charges Pierre, who decides that NOW he's ticked off and head-butts the Mexican bull, rocketing him to the other side of the ring. Then Pierre went back to relaxing in the sun. Never mess with a bison.
Along the lines of Space Bat, there is Hitchhiker Coyote. Got hit by a car going 75 mph on a highway in Utah. The drivers were sure that, at that speed, they'd turned him into a smear on the pavement and they just kept going. Eight hours of driving later, they discovered the coyote wedged into the bumper, shaken but essentially unharmed. He is now living the good life in California. (His awesome then broke the time-space continuum and traveled to M Night Shyamalan's head in the year 2000, who was inspired to cast Bruce Willis as the coyote in Unbreakable.)
In 1998, family pet Fido smelled smoke in his house, broke out of his cage, ran across a burning carpet, hopped up 15 stairs, and scratched on the door of his young owner, who woke up and roused the rest of the household. No, Fido wasn't the family German shepherd (who'd slept through the whole thing): he was a pet rat, weighing less than two pounds, who could barely even reach the tops of those 15 steps.

Pretty much anything Stephen Colbert has ever done since he got his own show. His finest hour (see Politics And War).
Before he gained prominence as a political commentator on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann was a clever anchor on ESPN's Sports Center. Unfortunately, he was a massive prick and the relationship ended too early. His moment of awesome? Years after the break-up, he published a lengthy column on Salon.com entitled "Mea culpa" (Latin for "My Fault"). In it, he took all the blame for the ESPN disaster, laid out the psychological insecurities that undermined him throughout his career and apologized to everyone he hurt.
- On the February 27, 2006 episode of Countdown, Olbermann did an entire segment on Bill O'Reilly's petition to get him fired from MSNBC and replaced by Phil Donahue. Olbermann responded by signing the petition himself, on air, during that segment. And so did every other member of the Countdown staff. Can you say balls of steel?
- After Peter Jennings died of lung cancer, Olbermann gave an impassioned plea for other smokers to follow his lead and quit. Mark Evanier provides a transcript.
Conan O'Brien very eloquently daring NBC to fire him after getting publicly screwed with.
- Jimmy Kimmel has come out with two CMO As in light of this. The first being the show on January 12th where he lampooned the crap out of Leno's Tonight Show and then going onto Leno's show on Thursday and just completely obliterating the crap out of him the entire interview.
- The way the other talk show hosts like Kimmel, Letterman, and Ferguson are sticking up for Conan and the shoddy treatment he's been getting. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart have also ridiculed NBC (Stewart called Jeff Zucker "the Dick Cheney of television" - ouch!). Hell, even George Lopez has called bullshit on NBC.
- Conan himself, well aware that he's going to be kicked off TV at any moment now, making the comedian's equivalent of a Last Stand by ripping into his NBC bosses (and Jay Leno) on a nightly basis.
  - For a specific example, probably the best moment throughout the entire thing whas when Conan Bought the worlds most expensive car, and played the original master recording of (I can't Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones as it's theme song. Probably fake, but still the best middle finger in Television history.
During the recent Haiti Earthquake, Anderson Cooper was down there covering it. He rescued a boy from a street attack and carried him to safety. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-P5D887IcI <—- warning, graphic content

Some of the shit Hunter Thompson got away with has to count, right?
- Like convincing half the people at a party that they were the only ones tripping with Hunter?
- Or shaving Johnny Depp's head with a straight razor as preparation for the "Fear and Loathing" movie.
  - Letting Hunter S. Thompson near your head with a straight razor might also be a crowning moment for Depp.
- Running for sheriff of Aspen (on a platform of legalizing recreational drugs and renaming Aspen "Fat City" to discourage profiteering investors) and shaving the last of his hair off so he could refer to his crew-cut ex-Army opponent as his "long-haired opponent."
- Robbing the same gas station three times in three days.
A German publisher interested in The Hobbit asked whether JRR Tolkien was of 'arisch' origin. He drafted two replies; the one in his British publisher's files says: "...I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy or any related dialects. If I am to understand that you are inquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people." (Sadly, the letter that he sent to Germany is lost to history.)
Oscar Wilde was notoriously flamboyant and effeminate throughout his life (it surprised no one when he was eventually arrested and convicted of homosexual acts). However, he was also 6'2" in a time when the average man was 5'7", and weighed over 200 pounds. He put these genetic gifts to good use at several points in his life:
- Once in college, a classmate mocked a poem he had written. Wilde punched him in the face.
- As an adult, his lover's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, sent a boxer to Wilde's house to beat him up, as a means of showing his disapproval of Wilde's relationship with his son. The boxer took one look at him and walked back out the door.
- Later, Lord Queensberry came by in person. Alluding to the rules of boxing, codified under his lordship's supervision and named for him, Wilde told him "I do not know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Wilde rules are to shoot on sight!"
  - THIS is why Wilde has his own action figure. To beat the hell out of all the other action figures and then come back five minutes later to make a snarky comment.
JK Rowling. The lady was a broke single mom living in a room above a London pub, and living off the British equivalent of food stamps. So what does she do? She jots down a story about an orphan boy who's really a badass wizard. Jo now has more money than King Solomon and is an inspiration to people all over the world.
- Not only is she an amazing success, but she's fantastically witty and sly to boot. During the infamous "Harry Potter Lexicon" plagiarism trial, the defendant tried to claim that making the lexicon was "a lot of work." JK's response? "Yes, I know it was. I did most of it." Burn.

The former A-Team star can add one more to his list of facts: "Mr T once brought a child out of a coma — just by talking to him!"
Fred "Mister" Rogers defending the PBS to the United States Senate. You Do Not Fuck With Mister Rogers. Period.
- Damn right.
John Belushi, on his 30th birthday, had the #1 movie in the box office (Animal House), the #1 album on the Billboard 200 chart (Briefcase Full of Blues by the Blues Brothers) and the highest-rated TV show (Saturday Night Live).
Brad Swaile is considered by most to have done a great job playing Light in the Death Note dub the whole way through, but his purely spectacular performance in the final episode (including having a crazed laugh just as epic as the original Japanese voice actor) cements his place here.
Actor Vin Diesel is an avid Dungeons And Dragons fan and World Of Warcraft player. His response to a surveyor's question for a Star Wars magazine, "Would you be a Sith or a Jedi?"- "I'd be Chaotic Neutral." Yeah, that's right. Vin Diesel is so awesome he can make outgeeking a geeky questioner into a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- Speaking of World of Warcraft, Blizzard telling Uwe Boll to basically go to hell when asked about possibly doing a World of Warcraft movie.
Dave Chappelle, among his many others, named his home farm "Fuck you Hollywood farm."
Undeniable proof that Sean Connery is just as tough as his characters: in 1957 he was working on the film Another Time, Another Place with Lana Turner. Turner's boyfriend, mob muscleman Johnny Stompanato, got paranoid that they were having an affair and burst onto the set with a gun. Connery walked right over and kicked his ass, then pushed him off the set.
Beginning with an encounter with a kid in a wheelchair at an amusement park and ending with Carlos getting punk'd by a special-ed kid, the dee-dee-dee portion of "Mind of Mencia: No Strings Attached" hit a line drive down the line separating Crowning Moment Of Awesome and Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. Those kids are more badass than I'd ever imagined.
Groucho Marx had the perfect way to make anti-Semitic segregation look ridiculous when he asked one question to a swimming pool manager told him he and his family couldn't use the pool because he was Jewish: "My nephew's half-Jewish, can he wade up to his knees?"
In Back To The Bat Cave Adam West tells a story of how once, after Batman had ended, he was lounging on a beach and noticed an angry looking man with a machete sneaking up on a woman sunbathing. As he tells the story, just as the man leaps to attack the woman (later to be revealed as the man's ex-girlfriend) and gives her a gash in the shoulder, West ran up to the guy and slammed him with a lounge chair, disarmed him, and, after alerting a nearby beach-cop, managed to corner the guy against the wall in a hotel garden.
- Please tell me it went like this at the Garden. "WHO ARE YOU!?" "I'm Batman."
Mel Brooks delivered his Crowning Moment within earshot of Roger Ebert. A woman got onto the elevator, recognized him and said, "I have to tell you, Mr. Brooks, that your movie is vulgar." Brooks smiled benevolently. "Lady," he said, "it rose below vulgarity."
Orson Welles' career is littered with CMOAs. Pick one.
- At the age of 19, this young white middle class inexperienced American directed an acclaimed all-black production of Macbeth.
- He then went on to create a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds so authentic, it frightened most of America into thinking there was an actual Martian invasion.
- After that he was invited work in movies by RKO. His price for doing so was total creative control and he be allowed to write, produce, direct and star in his own film with total editorial control of the result. At the age of 26, this novice who had never made a film in his life directed a group of unknown who had barely any film experience at all in what is now considered to be the most revolutionary and greatest film ever made. To cap it all, Citizen Kane was an attack on the most powerful newspaper baron at the time.
- In 1946, he learnt that a young black man, Isaac Woodward, had been arrested and badly beaten and blinded by a racist police officer. Orson Welles then devoted his radio show to hunting out this police officer in some of the most powerful broadcasts of his career.
In 1996, two kids were in a car that skidded and flipped near Mark Harmon's house. Harmon ran out with a sledgehammer, broke through the windows and pulled the kids out. WHILE THE CAR WAS ON FIRE. Yes, Gibbs is that awesome.
James Ransone, best known as the despicable "angry prince of the geeks" Ziggy Sobotka in The Wire, interrupted a rape in his apartment building, then chased down the man and whacked him with a pipe before restraining him until the police arrived.
Jamie Lee Curtis doing her own stuntwork being rescued from the out of control limo in True Lies, On her birthday.

Similar to the John Belushi example above, in the week of 4 April 1964, The Beatles held twelve positions on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five positions ("Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and "Please Please Me").
When acclaimed rapper Nas pulled out of a performance on Later With Jools Holland, a little-known Scottish woman was invited on - with 24 hours to prepare. Armed with only a guitar and a loop pedal, she proceeded to comprehensively upstage every other act on the show - including The Cure - with a stunning performance of sheer, utter balls. Yep, it's "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" by KT Tunstall.
Andy Kaufman's Carnegie Hall performance in 1979, the culmination of his fleeting mainstream success. Tony Clifton was the opening act (though the kiddie musical group he introduced didn't go over well - people thought it was a fake and booed them off) and later appeared with Andy on stage (it was actually Andy's brother at that point). All of Andy's signature bits up to that point showed up in some form: Elvis, congas, old films, kiddie sing-alongs, wrestling women (plus a guy in what turned out to be a Popeye spoof). His grandma sat on an onstage couch to watch - she turned out to be Robin Williams in drag. The encore had everything from Santa Claus to stand-ins for the Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Then he had the entire audience transported by school buses to an elementary school for milk and cookies. Then he told everyone that they could come to the Staten Island Ferry with him the following day for a ride and ice cream - and many did. He lost a lot of money on this even though the show sold out, but he apparently didn't care, which says a lot about who he was.
Rick Astley personally RickRolling the entire Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. For those who missed it, there's always YouTube.
This couples as a Crowning Music Of Awesome. Unemployed, middle-aged yet sassy Susan Boyle stuns Britain's Got Talent judges, audience, and staff, showing them that you don't need to look a diva to act the part.
Benjamin Teacher, for answering the question of what a one-handed guitar player sounds like. Answer : Totally Awesome. That's right, he has only one hand, yet manages to outplay people who have two - if he's not Made of Win, then who is?
Rick Allen. Drummer for the most popular rock band in the world (at the time) loses his arm in a car crash, helps conceive of a system to allow him to use his feet to make up for the lost limb and resumes his career. As a drummer. With one fucking arm!
Emilie Autumn. "You're in MY house now, bitch!"

The story behind the film "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe." The Crazy Awesome Herzog had befriended young director Errol Morris. Morris had a thousand ideas for making documentaries, but he never followed through. One day, Herzog backed him into a corner and made a bet "If you finish this movie (Gates Of Heaven), I will eat my shoe." When Morris did (and it is a wonderful little movie) Herzog did. He boiled and ate his own shoe.
- Werner Herzog also earns a Crowning Moment of Awesome for dealing with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski. How do you deal with a temperamental diva who threatens to walk out on your film? Pointing out that you're in the middle of a jungle and no-one's going to miss you if your director shoots you.
- Another one is his 2006 rescue of Joaquin Phoenix from a car wreck.
When director Ishiro Honda passed away, who delivered his eulogy at his funeral? None other than legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa.
Two Words: Steve Irwin.
- Five more words. Bindi Irwin at his funeral.
Michaelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which took years and had serious effects on his health, is one all its own, but within it is another one: on one edge of the ceiling, which slopes forward, he painted a main leaning backward. The perspective works perfectly, through what techniques this troper has no idea. And then you consider that he was very reluctant to take the job, being far more a sculptor than a painter.
- There's also the fact that, in addition to the absolutely mindboggling artistic virtuosity, he left hidden insults to the Pope who hired him, including an angel flipping him off.
- He did it all by himself (fired all the assistants because he hated them all), with a space of about three feet between the painting and his face. You don't have to be an artist to comprehend how profoundly difficult that would be.
John Bramblitt.
Bill Gates has one. Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft and the wealthiest person in the world. He's also engaged in philanthropist activities, particularly for third world countries. He was at a technology conference, talking about the dangers of mosquito spread malaria for the world's poor. He didn't think attendees would be very receptive, so what did he do? He brought some to the conference, and released the (malaria-free) cloud of mosquitoes on the attendees. Bill Gates: 1, Terrified Minions: 0.
- Bill Gates Vs. Doom Imp: It's pretty insane.

Notes to Mary. One man pulled an ARG out of his ass and rick-rolled the entire internet. Well, "entire internet" is a bit of a hyperbole, but you know. Click the link, find the forum posts dedicated to it; it's even crazier than it sounds.
Josh "Ponceman" Perry is a guy with mild Down's Syndrome with his own comedy series on Youtube called "The Retarded Policeman". Needless to say, many of the comments he got were from dicks insulting him. This is his response.
- "I may have Down's Syndrome, but you people are fucking retarded!" Crowning Moment of Awesome, indeed.
- This troper has a little brother with moderate-to-severe mental retardation and mild cerebral palsy. Despite this, he can conjure up Crowning Moment Of Awesome with a near Rain Man-esque ability. Personal favorite: at a press conference for a partnership between Destiny's Child and the Special Olympics, the troper's brother grabbed Beyoncé's ass on national television. And netted no punitive action!
Anonymous. More specifically, Project Chanology. The fact that the internet equivalent of herding cats when the catherders are also cats managed to pull off something this big is a moment of internet awesome in itself.
- Also want to point out Mark Bunker here, more commonly known on the internet as Wise Beard Man (His words are wise. His face is beard). When Anonymous started what was to become Project Chanology, they used less than legal methods, pretty much outright attacking Scientology with harassing phone calls, black page faxes, and denial-of-service attacks on the websites. Bunker posted a video on Youtube urging for anon to protest peacefully and to use more legal methods. Not only was he worried about what could happen to members of anon, he also stated that these actions were hurting those that have been fighting them for years. To the surprise of everybody, Bunker has become the only person to do the impossible "control the essence of chaos on the intrawebs." Anon actually listened to him, and it is because of him the various coordinated protests actually happened.
  - Yet another CMOA for Anonymous is the rescue of Dusty the cat. A video was shot of a teen abusing Dusty (his buddy was filming and didn't do anything to interfere) and uploaded it to Youtube. It was later quickly removed, but Anon (who were, from the words of the Wikipedia article, 'uncharacteristically outraged') managed to track the boy down basically using only his last name and pictures from Facebook and contacted authorities in his area. The teens were arrested and Dusty was rescued and taken to a vet. The cat is fine now. It just goes to show: don't mess with Anonymous and cats.
  - In both cases it's a trolls trolling trolls moment so the awesomeness is rendered moot. Message from anonymous.
- While Your Mileage May Vary, this Anon believes the Subeta raid was full of CMO As.
  - After the owner of Subeta handed over the accounts of 600+ users, Anon was able to do something it had always dreamed of—use the accounts to raid Gaia. Highlights included each raider gave a different story, much to the confusion of Gaia Online users, and one particular user was popular among Anon after her The Reason You Suck Speech, delivered shortly after Keith Kurson appeared on his own account, accused all the Gaians insulting him of being Anons on hacked accounts, and reported them all to the mods.
Anyone who has ever participated in the Dragonball Z fandom has heard of the "fourth series," Dragonball AF. No, it doesn't exist (except as fanart and doujinshi), but there are TONS of fanboys and fangirls claiming it does. So one Dragonball fansite created a massive April Fool's Day prank in 2004, claiming the new anime had just been announced, providing print ads, a commercial, and a professional-looking logo. And everyone believed them. And there are STILL fanboys using their commercial as "proof" of AF's existance. And one of the lines in the commercial is Goku's seiyuu asking if someone was calling her grandma.
This video. In Japan, a whole neighborhood participates in a prank to make two little kids think a zombie is attacking. Things don't go quite as planned, as despite being completely fooled, they keep their heads and end up beating the crap out of the poor guy playing the zombie. If there's ever a real Zombie Apocalypse, those kids will be ready.
All the participants in the "Big Fat Gay Collaboration" video on youtube to protest homophobia and other forms of discrimination, set to Lilly Allen's song "Fuck You Very Much." Seriously, look it up.
MLIA.com seems to be made entirely out of Crowning Moments, Harry Potter references, and light sabers.
- This Troper thinks it should be renamed My Life Is Awesome.

The Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Raise your hand if your jaw left your mouth and would buy a DVD of the ceremony.
- Which part is this, where they brought in the pretty girl to lipsynch for the ugly one, or where they used CGI fireworks footage because capturing the real thing was too hard?
  - I will concede that point, but you can't tell me that all the other stuff they did was anything but impressive and a little frightening.
  - Oh, you mean the part where the 56 "minority children" were actually all Han Chinese?
- That Opening Ceremony was oversaturated and plain boring. Barcelona '92 Opening Ceremony on the other hand... How Bad Ass can you get by lighting the Olympic Flame with a bow and an arrow?
- As an Australian, I may be biased, but the 2000 Opening Ceremony. Lighting the Olympic Flame... then STANDING IN THE MIDDLE AS IT RISES UP.
- It being the first Olympics I watched may bias me, but what about 1996? The Olympic Torch being lit by none other than Muhammad Ali.
  - So we can agree that the best possible torch-lighting would consist of Muhammad Ali setting himself and fire and being shot out of a cannon?
This comment in an AskMetafilter thread describing an incident in which a queue-jumper (line-cutter to Americans) is handled in a quintessentially British way.
The mere existence of the Ford Taurus SHO. Boring family sedan + Yamaha-sourced engine = HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
- Then there's BringBackTheSHO.com, which is a CMOA because Ford listened to them.
  - Then there's the billiard-table-smooth torque curve of the new SHO. The EcoBoost V6 from the car is going to be so awesome.
George Mason University elects a drag queen as homecoming queen
The Masquerade of the Midlands Expo 2009, when almost the entire audience climbed onto the stage to dance their hearts out. Also, "three cheers for the judge table!" (just the table, mind, no judges were on it at the time). When the crowd feeds off its own randomness, you have an instant recipe for awesome.
One woman made and threw a blueberry pie in the Enron CEO's face when he went for a meeting in California halfway through the energy crisis. Halfway through the meeting. Because it was his fault.
Pepsi Cola received a message from someone claiming to have the recipe for Coke's new product, and Pepsi, Coke's biggest rival (for those rockdwellers...) turned the person into authorities and contacted Coke, instead of accepting an opportunity for a free recipe of a competitor's product.
- This Troper also thinks he remembers them saying, roughly "We don't want Coke's recipe, if we wanted to be Coke, we'd be Coke, but we're Pepsi"
  - Also a moment of stupidity on the part of the person. What actually protects a company's formula are the laws, not it's secrecy. Any half decent lab can determine everything that goes into the drink without half this trouble. In fact, a lot of countries actually require any consumables to have their formulas publicly known.
  - Eh, not entirely. The fact that you know their contents doesn't mean you can actually make it. We know what Damaskian Steel swords are made of, we just have no idea how they made them. We aren't able to make them either, with all our basic nanotechnology. Still, one of the Cokes ingredients, coca leaves, are only allowed to be produced by a single company which in turn can only supply it to The Coca Cola Company. So Yeah.
These cakes.
In 1995, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee recieved an anonymous letter containing a $1,000,000 gamepiece from the McDonald's Monopoly game. Normally the game rules prohibit the transfer of prizes. However, McDonald's waived the rule and has been making the annual $50,000 payment installments (due to end in 2015).
The Bubonic Plague was a bad time, at one point, the Bubonic Plague reached a town, so what did they do? Run? Hide? No. They blocked themselves off so that nobody could get in or out, meaning that they died so the disease wouldn't get out.

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