Incredible Feats

A mine collapse left 33 miners trapped a half-mile below the surface in an underground shelter. It would take an international team of rescuers 69 days to save them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Doctors said Fauja Singh may never walk. So they’d be pretty surprised to learn that he became the first 100-year-old to run a marathon, and the oldest known person to run a marathon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Give Tarrare lizards, snakes, and a squirming eel, he’ll eat those too… along with rocks, bandages, and trash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maybe robots will take over the world. Maybe they’ll just help us drum really, really well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Separated from his climbing group in a whiteout, no one thought Dr. Beck Weathers would make it back to camp. But he lived to tell his tale, and see it on the big screen with the 2015 film ‘Everest.’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Getti Kehayova decided that the best way to honor her late sister, a world record-breaking hula-hooper, was to set a record for spinning the World’s Biggest Hula-Hoop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Considered one of the most versatile athletes of all time, Jim Thorpe went to the 1912 Olympics and dominated. Not only did he win gold medals, he won the approval of his girlfriend’s parents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gymnast Brittany Walsh wanted to do something different, so she trained herself to shoot arrows with her feet — and she didn’t stop there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On a solo journey across the Atlantic, Steve Callahan was forced into his inflatable liferaft. He spent the next two and half months adrift at sea, waiting to be rescued. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After years of chronic pain, pro motocross racer Chris Ridgway requested to have his left leg amputated. But that didn’t stop him from racing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Setting 20 stunt people on fire was all in a day's work for Emmy-winning stunt coordinator Rowley Irlam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While a school building burned just yards behind them, rival football teams from Deerfield Academy and the Mt. Hermon School for Boys played on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A blocked road. Then a flat tire. Trapped at the bottom of a canyon with a wildfire burning all around him, Don Myron was going to find a way out or die trying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most people don’t have a burning desire to motorcycle through a 395-foot tunnel of flames. But for daredevils Enrico Schoeman and André de Kock, it was a surefire way to set a new world record. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the Woolsey Fire burned, volcanologist Jess Phoenix drove into danger, determined to save terrified horses that couldn’t be evacuated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Chennai, India, Illayaram Sekar solved a record-breaking number of Rubik’s Cubes while completely submerged. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lindsey Vonn’s ski racing resume is spectacularly impressive — even more so when you consider how many supposedly career-ending injuries she’s sustained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nearly doomed to an icy grave, Joe Simpson crawled back to basecamp with a shattered leg after summiting Siula Grande in Peru. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rocky Stoutenburgh was just 19 years old when an accident left him permanently paralyzed from the shoulders down. Twelve years later, he started breaking world records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pop quiz: how fast would you have to drive in order to break the speed of sound? Andy Green went supersonic in 1997 — twice — setting the world record for land speed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It can be tricky to master even a sleight of hand, but illusionist David Blaine took his magic to the next level when he changed his body inside and out… all so he could hold his breath the longest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2012, breaking the collegiate basketball scoring record seemed impossible. But Jack Taylor had a few things going for him… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a lifetime of adventure, Fedor Konyukhov remembered an idea he had in 1992 — one that would take his ambitions sky-high, and break multiple circumnavigation records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A battle with cancer cost him a limb, but Terry Fox felt lucky just to be alive — so he poured his gratitude into an impossible-sounding mission that would let him give back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the time Yuichiro Miura was 80 years old, he’d already set a skiing record, survived a near-death experience, and glided down the highest mountain in Japan. But he wasn’t done pushing his limits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ester Ladecka from the Czech Republic became the first woman to win a gold medal in two different sports in the span of one Winter Olympics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not even expected to medal in the 2012 London Olympics, gymnast Gabby Douglas became the first American to win gold medals in both the Individual and Team All-Around. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He might be legally blind, but South Korea’s Im Dong-Hyun can always find the bullseye. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Facing 9-time world champ and 3-time Olympic gold medalist Aleksandr Karelin from Russia, Rulon Gardner of the U.S. came up with the biggest upset in Olympic wrestling history to win the gold medal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tennis champion Richard Norris Williams II won his first Grand Slam in mixed-doubles in the U.S. Open. Months earlier, he survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

High school and college national wrestling championships were just the beginning for Anthony Robles. When his wrestling career was over, he set out to break world records and did so, all with only one leg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice was used to performing under pressure. But nothing would prepare him for what happened during the 4th inning of a game August 7, 1982 at Fenway Park. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Imagine doing something called the “death whirl” on an 18-inch platform 100 feet above the ground. That was just part of the routine that Benny Fox and his partner “Betty” would perform multiple times a day throughout the 1930s and 40s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After losing an arm in a 2003 shark attack, 13 year old Bethany Hamilton had to work even harder to achieve her goal of becoming a professional surfer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Up and coming tennis star Naomi Osaka faced her idol, the legendary Serena Williams, and won a controversial match. To set the record straight, Osaka beat Williams a second time on her way to her 4th Grand Slam title. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It took 13 years, but Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner became the first woman to summit the world’s highest mountains without sherpas or supplemental oxygen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Goals are important. Ada Hegerberg scored a lot of them as Norway’s top women’s soccer player. But when the National Team didn’t get the practice time and pay they deserved, she found a new goal to achieve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Plennie Wingo had a retro idea… To make money during the Great Depression, he’d walk around the world backward. And while it cost him his marriage, walking backwards is certainly something he did on three different continents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a nearly impossible-to-reach subterranean cave, a group of young women searched for fossils — and found a brand new species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

19-year-old Blake Spataro was stranded in the open ocean for hours with no life vest. He would miraculously survive the experience and refer to it as “the worst vacation ever.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Known as America’s first daredevil, Sam Patch had a penchant for jumping into waterfalls. And there was one particular waterfall he needed to conquer: Niagara Falls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He was up all night vomiting, but you wouldn't have known it from the way Michael Jordan performed in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After winning the first-ever Women’s PBA Championship, Kelly Kulick got the opportunity to compete against the men. And she didn’t just beat them. She destroyed them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kathrine Switzer set out to be the first woman to legally run the Boston Marathon. No one was gonna make it easy for her — but who could’ve predicted the bodyslams? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thirty-six pull-ups would be a personal record for most people. But Tazio il Biondo isn't like most people. He set a Guinness record with 36 consecutive pull-ups… using just his two pinky fingers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1863, a colonel in the Union Army approached Harriet Tubman with a dangerous mission: rescue hundreds of enslaved people from inside Confederate territory. She accepted, becoming the only woman to lead a Civil War military operation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before he was drafted by the New York Yankees, Hall of Famer Yogi Berra was drafted by the U.S. Navy to fight in World War II. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born into slavery, James Armistead risked his life to help secure an American victory in the Revolutionary War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The British military needed to crack the German Enigma Code to win World War II. It had nearly 159 quintillion solutions. They called on Alan Turing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American spy Virginia Hall braved the Pyrenees Mountains in November to escape the Gestapo, who called her “The Enemy’s Most Dangerous Spy.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices