Unreal Heroes Who Died Protecting Precious Knowledge

Faced with a choice between his life and the sanctity of history, Khaled told ISIS to take a flying fuck at a goat. They held him for what was undoubtedly an unpleasant month, but they couldn't break him. Finally, ISIS took the 80-something historian to a public square, beheaded him, and strung his body up for everyone to see ... how their entire armed force completely failed to best a single octogenarian.

Instead of leaflet campaigns and catchy chants, Fossey's idea of environmental conservation involved pistol-whipping poachers (on whom she put out fucking bounties), kidnappings, and supernatural intimidation. She purposefully built a reputation for herself as an actual witch and voodoo master, and sometimes even wore a gorilla mask to scare people off gorilla territory. She was basically Batman to a Gotham City populated solely by gorillas.

Warner Brothers Animation
Of course this picture exists.

In late December 1985, someone with an intimate knowledge of her Rwanda camp snuck into Fossey's room at night and hacked her to death with a machete. It could have been a disgruntled employee, a poacher sick of nursing those incessant pistol-whippings, or maybe even a contract killer. But although there were plenty of suspects and some arrests have been made, no plausible culprit was ever produced. But experts agree that if it weren't for Fossey, mountain gorillas would have likely gone extinct a long time ago. Whether it was all worth it mainly depends on your feelings about gorillas and lady badasses. Our official stance is: positively.

In the midst of the Second World War, as the Nazi army was marching on Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg), a group of scientists at the Institute of Plant Industry refused to run, and instead grabbed a bunch of sharp farming equipment and ... started digging up potatoes.

They were frantically harvesting precious collections of seeds and tubers so they could hide them in the institute's seed bank. But these weren't your ordinary pre-vegetables and grains. They were part of a research effort to curb famine with the help of super crops that were more resilient to diseases, pests, harsh climates, etc. We're talking about the Avengers of crops here.

Global Crop Diversity Trust
They let the Hawkeye crop wither and die decades ago, because it's the Hawkeye crop.

So when the Germans implemented a blockade on the city, the scientists remained with their hidden scientific bounty and waited for help. Unfortunately, the siege of Leningrad would end up lasting more than two years, and if you're wondering how much non-scientifically-priceless food the scientists had with them in their pantry bunker, the answer is "not enough."

Let's be clear: The scientists had enough potatoes and rice with them to commit suicide by carbs, but to them, that would have been like eating the Mona Lisa. These seeds and samples, many of which weren't found anywhere else in the world, were meant to save millions of lives -- not just a few dozen. In the end, nine botanists died of hunger in a warehouse housing tons of food.

N.I. Vavilov Institute Of Plant Genetic Resources
Their leader, Nikolai Vavilov, starved to death in prison -- no less terrible, though far less ironic.

The Monuments Men was the colloquial name for members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program. They were an Allied Forces unit created during WWII to help rescue artwork that the Nazis wanted to blow up, keep for themselves, or perhaps merely teabag (they were jerks, after all).

National Archives and Records Administration
"Counterpoint: We weren't Nazis."

The program consisted of a ragtag group of men and women who would sooner be found in a library than a war zone, including British historian Ronald Balfour and American architect Walter Huchthausen. But academia and crazy badasses are not mutually exclusive. Balfour, for example, spent years traveling across Europe, sometimes having to hitchhike from site to site to save the continent's cultural heritage. In fact, he had just saved an archive dating back to the 14th century, and was in the process of moving parts of a medieval altarpiece from behind enemy lines, when he was killed by a shell burst.

King's College Archive Centre
His heroism was forever immortalized by George Clooney cutting him out of the goddamn movie about his heroism.

Huchthausen met a similar fate when he dashed ahead of American forces in Germany in order to save a newly-discovered cache of priceless art, and was met with a wall of machine gun fire. After his death, soldiers were able to use information he had previously gathered to locate crates filled with paintings by Dutch masters and the original manuscript of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.

University Of Minnesota
Which you'll sit down and listen to right now.

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens, a volcano located in the state of Washington, erupted.

Austin Post / United States Geologial Survey
Not the sweet Van Halen kind. The people-killing kind.

A few miles away stood photographer Robert Landsburg, who'd spent the last couple of weeks documenting the site. He witnessed firsthand as the initial landslide -- the size of two city blocks -- crumbled away from the mountainside and dropped into the lake below, creating 600-foot waves. Landsburg pointed his camera upwards to capture an ash plume rising 15 miles above the top of the mountain, blocking out the Sun and turning day into darkness. Sweeping clouds of molten rock, lava, and ash tore down the face of the mountain at 670 mph, obliterating everything in their path. That's right about when Landsburg realized that something that could so easily destroy a mountain could probably destroy a Landsburg without much difficulty.

National Geographic
He couldn't even walk toward the light, because the smoke snuffed it all out.

Coming to terms with the fact that he couldn't outrun a volcano, Landsburg decided to make his last moments on Earth count. He documented the eruption until the last possible second, then carefully rewound his film, placed his camera in his backpack, and lay down on top of it, shielding the equipment from the encroaching shower of magma and ash with his own body. Seventeen days later, Landsburg's body was found with his film still intact. His photographs were published, and have since provided geologists with valuable information about the historic eruption.

National Geographic
Their biggest discovery: Landsburg's balls.

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Deep inside us all -- behind our political leanings, moral codes, and private biases -- there is a cause so colossally stupid that we surprise ourselves with how much we care. Whether it's toilet paper position, fedoras on men, or Oxford commas, we each harbor a preference so powerful that we can't help but proselytize about it to the world. In the next live episode of the Cracked podcast, guest host Soren Bowie is joined by Cody Johnston, Michael Swaim, and comedian Annie Lederman to discuss the most trivial things we will argue about until the day we die. Get your tickets here!

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