For many different reasons, the people on
this list aren’t household names, but they had a major impact on the world. In some cases, there is something physically
unique that is found only in them. Others have done something that has had a
massive, rippling effect throughout history that we still feel today. Some of the people on this list, who are as
anonymous to you as that weird neighbor you actively avoid when taking out the trash,
are responsible for saving millions of lives. In other cases, they have caused millions
of deaths. So again, probably like that weird neighbor. 10. James Harrison In 1951, Australian James Harrison was 14
and had to undergo major surgery to remove one of his lungs. After he woke up from the procedure, his father
explained to him that during his surgery, he was given 13 units of blood; all of it
was from random strangers. As Harrison lay in bed recovering, he had
time to think, and realized that without the donated blood, he would have died, so he vowed
to donate blood as soon as he was old enough. Four years later, Harrison started to donate,
and not long afterwards, doctors noticed something unique in Harrison’s blood. What is unique about his blood has to do with
blood group systems. There are 35 of them, and the most common
is ABO. For example, most people have O-positive or
A-positive blood. The second most common blood group is the
Rh blood group. The problem with Rh was that if a woman had
Rh-negative blood and she was pregnant with a fetus that had Rh-positive blood, it would
lead to rhesus disease. The disease caused women to develop antibodies
that attack the fetus’ blood cells because they are foreign. This often resulted in brain damage and miscarriages. Thousands of babies died every year because
of it. What the doctors found in Harrison’s blood
is a unique and very rare antibody. Using the antibody, doctors developed an injection
called Anti-D that prevents rhesus disease; one of the first of its kind. As a result of his blood, it’s believed
that 2 million babies have been saved. 9. John Bardeen John Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin,
in May 1908, and was a gifted child. He enrolled in engineering at the University
of Wisconsin when he was just 15. After school, he got a job as a geophysicist
with Gulf Oil. He spent three years working as a geophysicist,
but he didn’t care for the job so he went to Princeton and got his PhD in mathematical
physics. After a three year stint as a junior fellow
at Harvard, Bardeen got a job at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1945. While working with William Shockley and Walter
Brattain, they invented the transistor. Transistors could replace vacuum tubes in
electronics, which were big and bulky, so with transistors, components and electronics
could be miniaturized. Eventually, transistors would become important
in the evolution of computers. For their work, Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain
were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. After helping create a life-changing invention,
Bardeen went back to work on something that interested him throughout his life – superconductivity. Working with L.N. Cooper and J.R. Schrieffer, they developed
the BCS theory of superconductivity, which is the foundation of all work in superconductivity
that came afterwards. The theory explains why there is little to
no electrical resistance when materials reach temperatures that are close to absolute zero. This theory led to inventions like CAT scans
and MRIs. The theory also led to Bardeen’s second
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1972, making him one of four people to win two Nobel prizes
and the only person to win it twice for physics. Despite winning two Nobel prizes that changed
everyday life, Bardeen isn’t well known outside the world of science. 8. Olaudah Equiano In contemporary times, we know that slavery
is wrong. Enslaving another human is easily one of the
worst things someone can do. It’s cruel and dehumanizing, to say the
least. However, as you surely know, for a long time
not everyone thought that way. Someone who is responsible for helping to
change many minds on slavery was Olaudah Equiano. Supposedly, Equiano and his sister were kidnapped
at around the age of 11 by local slave traders in what is today Nigeria. They were separated days later, and Equiano
was shipped to Barbados, where he experienced the horrifying middle passage, which is where
slaves were locked in cages and shipped across the Atlantic from their homes in Africa to
the New World. He eventually ended up in Virginia. Unfortunately, there is no way to verify the
story of his early life. However, after he arrived in Virginia, there
are plenty of records to back up the claims he would later make. In Virginia, he was sold to an officer with
the Royal Navy and spent eight years traveling the seas. During this time, he learned to read and write. He was also given the name Gustavus Vassa. He was then sold to a merchant where he worked
as a deckhand, a valet, and a barber. He also did some trading on the side, and
within three years he made enough to purchase his own freedom. For the next 20 years, Equiano traveled the
world and became active in the abolitionist movement in Europe. But most importantly, in 1798, he was the
first former slave to publish an autobiography – The Interesting Narrative of the Life
of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. The book was hugely popular and made Equiano
a well-known activist. What his book did was give a new perspective
on slavery, because he gave a firsthand account. Thousands of people either read his book or
listened to him speak, making him incredibly influential when it came to changing the laws
around slavery. The Slave Trade in England was finally abolished
in 1807, 10 years after Equiano’s death. 7. Joseph Lister Isn’t it nice that people have better than
a 50/50 chance of living if they have to amputate a limb? Or how about the fact that people can now
have surgery and not have to fight getting sepsis by only using hopes and prayers? Well, the person to thank for that is English
surgeon Joseph Lister, who is hailed as the father of modern surgery. Lister came up with common practices that
are still used, and will always be used, by doctors and surgeons. This includes practices like doctors have
to wash their hands and sterilize their surgical instruments. Which seems like amazingly basic stuff today,
but somehow more amazingly, he was apparently the first surgeon to use methods that now
just seem like common sense. He came up with the idea in 1865, based on
Louis Pasteur’s theory that microorganisms cause infection. While Lister was honored in the medical community,
and had a mouthwash named after him, he never reached the fame that other doctors received
despite developing techniques that have saved countless lives over the past 150 years. 6. Henrietta Lacks Loretta Pleasant was born in Roanoke, Virginia,
in August 1920, and she would later change her name to Henrietta. Her mother died when she was 4 and she was
sent to live with her grandfather, who lived in a log cabin that had previously existed
as slave quarters on a plantation. She shared a room with her cousin, David Lacks. 10 years later, when Henrietta was 14, she
gave birth to a baby boy that David fathered. Four years later, they had a daughter, and
then they got married in 1941. In January 1951, they were living in Maryland
and Henrietta went to the only hospital in the area that treated African-Americans, John
Hopkins, because she had pain and bleeding in the abdomen. Sadly, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. For several months, Henrietta went to get
radiation treatment and during one of her treatment sessions, doctors took two samples
of the tumor without her knowledge. Henrietta passed away on October 4, 1951,
at the age of 31, but part of her never died. For decades, scientists at John Hopkins had
tried to grow tissue, but they weren’t very successful; usually the cells died after a
few days. However, for some reason Henrietta’s cells
were much more durable. Dr. George Otto Gey was able to isolate and
multiply a specific cell belonging to Henrietta, making it the first time immortal cells were
grown in culture. The cell line, called HeLa, became quite popular
in the scientific community and it was a crucial part of many important discoveries and breakthroughs. For example, it was used in the discovery
of the vaccination for polio and her cells were used in the first space missions to see
what would happen to human cells in space. The cell line was also important when it came
to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and cloning. The cell line is still popular and there are
over 10,000 patents that used the HeLa cell line in their development. However, the family of Henrietta had no idea
her cells were being used until 1970. For years they tried to gain control of the
cell line with little success. Then in 2013, Henrietta’s genome sequence
was published without the family’s knowledge or permission, which is a huge violation of
privacy. After this happened, the National Institutes
of Health asked two descendants of Henrietta’s to join the HeLa Genome Data Access working
group, which looks at how the cells are used. Finally, the family gained a little bit of
control over the cell line. 5. Mohamed Bouazizi In 2011, Mohamed Bouazizi was 26-years-old
and lived in the small, impoverished city of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. Bouazizi was the main breadwinner for his
family of eight, making his living from selling fruits and vegetables in a market. His family said that his dream was to buy
a pickup truck to replace the cart that he used to sell his wares. On December 17, 2010, a female municipal inspector
named Media Hamdi confiscated Bouazizi’s fruit-weighing scales for not having a vending
license. Bouazizi had been hassled in the past by government
officials, but this incident got particularly ugly. Supposedly, when Bouazizi tried to pay a fine,
or a bribe depending on who you ask, Hamdi became enraged. She supposedly slapped him, spit at him, and
insulted his dead father. Humiliated, Bouazizi went to the provincial
headquarters to complain. When he couldn’t get anyone to speak to
him, he went and got some gasoline. When he returned to the headquarters, he poured
the gas over himself and set himself on fire. Bouazizi didn’t die right away, taking over
two weeks to succumb to his injuries on January 4, 2011. Before he died, people were already drawing
inspiration from his act of self-immolation. At the time, Tunisia was under the rule of
the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who took over the country in a bloodless coup
in 1987. Under his rule, corruption spread and unemployment,
especially among recent university graduates, was very high in the country. When Bouazizi set himself on fire, it was
falsely reported that he was university educated and despite it not being true, it made the
narrative of his death more powerful to his fellow countrymen. Nevertheless, Bouazizi’s death, that stemmed
from his frustration of dealing with a corrupt government headed by a dictator, became symbolic
and inspired mass protests in Tunisia. Due to the civil unrest, Ben Ali went into
exile in early 2011 and in 2014, they had their first free and fair election since gaining
independence in 1956. These protests also inspired people in other
countries in the area to protest, giving birth to the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring has led to three other dictators
being ousted or overthrown and the ongoing civil war in Syria. 4. Rosalind Franklin Born in 1920 in England, Rosalind Franklin
decided at the age of 15 that she wanted to be a scientist. When she was old enough, she attended Cambridge
University and at 26 she received her PhD in chemistry. After her schooling, Franklin began working
with a technique called X-ray diffraction, which is using X-rays to create images of
crystallized solids. This allowed her to look at something at a
molecular level. In 1950, Franklin went to work at King’s
College in London. Her job was to use X-ray diffraction to look
at DNA. During her time there, she came close to providing
an answer to how DNA is structured, but she never got a chance to figure it out because
a co-worker named Maurice Wilkins cheated her out of the opportunity to do so. When Franklin started working at King’s
College, Wilkins was on vacation. When he came back, he claimed not to know
what Franklin’s role was in the lab and just assumed that, because she was a woman,
she was there to assist him in his work. Franklin, on the other hand, did not know
that anyone else was working on DNA, so she shared information about her work with Wilkins. Another problem was that Franklin and Wilkins
had clashing personalities, leading to a contentious workplace. All of these elements would come together
and forever change history, while completely cheating Franklin out of credit for her work. In May 1952, Franklin and her PhD student,
Raymond Gosling, captured an X-ray diffraction image called Photograph 51, which was a piece
of DNA. Without her knowledge, Wilkins showed the
picture to American biologist James Watson and when he saw it, something clicked. Watson and a molecular biologist named Francis
Crick used Photograph 51 to write an article explaining that DNA had a double helix structure. The article was published in Nature in April
1953 and in it, they failed to credit Franklin for her contribution to the discovery. At this point, Franklin’s relationship with
King’s College was strained and the head of her department let her quit on the condition
that she never again work on DNA. At her new job at Birkbeck College, she wrote
17 papers and her team created the foundation for structural virology. In 1956, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer
and died two years later on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37. Four years later, in 1962, Watson, Crick and,
unbelievably, Maurice Wilkins were given the Nobel Prize for Medicine, but Franklin has
never been given official recognition for her contributions to one of the biggest discoveries
in modern science. 3. Norman Borlaug Norman Borlaug was born in Cresco, Iowa, in
March 1914. When he was 27, he got his PhD in plant protection. In the 1930s and 1940s, he went to work in
Mexico and helped the farmers there by improving their techniques and methods. He also developed a special type of wheat
for them, called dwarf wheat, which is ideal for being grown in Mexico. By 1956, thanks to Borlaug’s work Mexico
had become self-sufficient with wheat. Around the same time, other countries around
the world were experiencing population explosions and their governments were having a hard time
producing enough food for all their citizens. Two countries that were plagued by food shortages
due to increasing populations were India and Pakistan. During the 1960s, Borlaug brought his techniques
and dwarf wheat to India and Pakistan, which improved their agricultural systems immensely. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize, but the award never made him a celebrity. Instead, he continued to work in developing
countries, trying to improve their agriculture systems, for five decades. It’s believed that because of Borlaug’s
five decades of work, a billion people were saved. Borlaug, who is considered a central figure
in the Green Revolution, died in September 2009 at the age of 95. 2. Dona Marina Dona Marina was born with the name Malintzin
around 1501 to a noble Aztec family. Her father, who was a chief, died when she
was very young. Her mother remarried and that marriage produced
a son, and most likely at the urging of her stepfather who wanted his son to be chief,
Malintzin was sold into slavery. She was sent to the city of Tabasco, and by
the time she arrived she could speak the languages of both the Aztecs, which was called Nahuatl,
and the Mayans. In 1519, Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés
arrived in the city of Tabasco, and he was given 20 female slaves, which he baptized. One of those slaves was Malintzin, who he
christened Dona Marina. Not long afterwards, Cortés learned that
Marina could speak both Mayan and Nahuatl. This was important because Cortés had a priest
who was a slave that could speak both Mayan and Spanish. Using the two interpreters, Cortés passed
along messages of peace to the leader of the Aztecs, Montezuma. Marina, who clearly had a gift for languages,
quickly learned to speak Spanish and Cortés used her as an interpreter when his forces
started to attack non-Aztec cities. What would happen is that the Spanish would
attack the non-Aztec Indians, but then back off. Marina was then brought in to negotiate peace. Part of the negotiation was that she also
asked them for their help with Spain’s upcoming war against the Aztecs. The non-Aztec Indians agreed to help not only
to save their own cities from the Spanish, but also because the Aztecs used their cities
as farms for human sacrifices. They hated it, but they were never strong
enough to do anything about it. All of Marina’s work would pay off for Cortés
and the Spanish forces because when they invaded the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs
were surprised because they thought that they were coming in peace. In fact, they welcomed Cortés and his men
in their city. Not only was their guard down, but since the
Spanish had forged alliances with the non-Aztec Indians, the Aztecs found themselves outnumbered
and out-weaponed and they were conquered in just two years. Besides helping with the logistics of bringing
down the Aztec empire, Marina was also Cortés’ mistress. She got pregnant and gave birth to a son,
Martín Cortés, making him the first Mestizo, which is a person who has both European and
Amerindian blood. While Marina could be considered a traitor
because she did help foreigners take over her native land, the people of her time respected
her. She is credited with saving thousands of lives
by being able to negotiate peace instead of Cortés declaring all out war. Of course, the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs
not only gave birth to the country of Mexico, but it also led to the colonization of South
America. 1. Gavrilo Princip We told you at the beginning, not everyone
on this list is responsible for lives saved. Now we get to millions of lives that were
lost. While there were many contributing factors
that led to the start of World War I, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
of Austria is considered the spark that set it off. On June 28, 1914, Ferdinand, who was the heir
to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was doing a tour of the newly acquired state of Bosnia. A group of Bosnian-born Serbs weren’t happy
they were now under Austrian rule, so they decided to assassinate the heir to their throne. The most famous version of the story is that
a grenade was thrown at the motorcade by Nedeljko Cabrinovic, but it was an old grenade and
had a 10 second fuse on it. So it didn’t do anything to Ferdinand’s
car, instead causing chaos that led Ferdinand’s limo to flee from the motorcade. Cabrinovic then swallowed a cyanide pill and
jumped into the river. However, the pill was past its expiration
date so it didn’t kill him, it just made him sick. Also, the river was only four inches deep,
so he was arrested… a sequence so hilarious we wish footage existed so we could set it
to the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme song. Anyway, one of Cabrinovic’s allies, 20-year-old
Gavrilo Princip, watched the failed assassination attempt, and decided to leave. He walked a few streets over to a deli, where
he ordered a sandwich. Meanwhile, Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie,
who had been hiding out in the town hall, decided to go to the hospital to visit the
men who were injured by the grenade. However, along the way their limo driver got
lost and they ended up on the same street where Princip was eating a sandwich. Seeing his opportunity, Princip pulled out
a pistol and fired two bullets; the first one hit Sophie and the second hit Ferdinand. They were both killed in the shooting and
Princip was arrested. It’s certainly an interesting story that
a series of coincidences sparked the First World War, but it’s probably not true. First off, sandwiches weren’t really popular
in Bosnia at the time. Secondly, while Princip was still standing
outside of the restaurant when he killed the Ferdinands, it was a restaurant on the original
route the motorcade was on before it was sent off course by the bomb. Nevertheless, in October 1914, Princip was
sentenced to 20 years in prison, but died on April 28, 1918. While he may be the best known person on this
list, he’s still not a household name considering his actions directly started the First World
War, which left 80 million dead, and World War I directly led to massive historical events
like the rise of Hitler, the Russian Revolution, and ultimately World War II.
