In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was about to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee when a man shot him in the chest. The bullet passed through his steel eyeglass case and a folded 50-page speech in his coat pocket, which slowed it enough to lodge in his chest muscle rather than pierce his lung. Roosevelt checked that he wasn't coughing blood, stepped up to the podium, and delivered his 90-minute speech anyway, opening with: "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." The bullet remained in his chest for the rest of his life.
When a young Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates, he scoffed at their ransom demand of 20 talents and insisted they ask for 50, because he was worth more. While waiting for payment, he joked that he would come back and crucify every one of them. They laughed. After the ransom was paid and he was freed, he raised a fleet, captured the pirates, and crucified them all.
When Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta threatening "If I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city," the Spartans sent back a one-word reply: "If." Philip left Sparta alone.
Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda was deployed to a Philippine island in 1944. He refused to believe the war was over for 29 years, dismissing leaflets, newspapers, and family photos airdropped over the jungle as Allied propaganda. He finally surrendered in 1974, but only after his former commanding officer, by then a retired bookseller, was located and flown to the island to formally relieve him of duty.
The 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis was run in 90-degree heat with one water station. The first man to cross the finish line had secretly hitched a car ride for 11 miles. The actual winner was fed strychnine and brandy by his trainers and had to be carried across the line. A Cuban mailman who lost his travel money gambling cut his trousers into shorts, ate rotten apples mid-race, took a nap, and still finished fourth.
Carlos Kaiser had a professional football career in Brazil from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, playing for clubs including Flamengo, Botafogo, and Fluminense. The twist: he almost never actually played. Kaiser was a con artist. He was handsome, charismatic, and a fixture of Rio's nightlife. He would get signed to clubs through connections and smooth talking, then fake injuries during training so he'd never have to appear in a match and reveal that he was terrible. When one manager finally forced him to come on as a substitute, Kaiser ran to the stands and started a fight with a fan so he'd be sent off before he had to touch the ball. He survived for over a decade this way.