01Werner HerzogHerzog boiled and ate his own shoe — with garlic and duck fat — after Errol Morris finished a film Herzog bet he never would. The documentary of the meal runs 28 minutes. He called the shoe "quite acceptable."Wikipedia ↗g63000%Card
02Rigoberta MenchúBefore turning twenty-three, Rigoberta Menchú had memorized the name and story of every neighbor disappeared in Guatemala's civil war. She dictated her testimony in eight days to anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray — in a second language.Wikipedia ↗g63000%Card
03Dolly PartonDolly Parton quietly donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University's COVID research — helping fund the Moderna vaccine — then turned down a Tennessee statue in her own honor because she felt she hadn't "earned that right yet."Wikipedia ↗g59100%Card
04Malala YousafzaiShot in the head by a Taliban gunman on a school bus in 2012, Malala Yousafzai was airlifted to Birmingham, received reconstructive surgery, and was back in class ten months later — at age sixteen — in the same city.Wikipedia ↗g58000%Card
05Temple GrandinTemple Grandin designed curved cattle chutes that now move a third of U.S. livestock more calmly — by imagining the animal's eye-level view of shadows, dead ends, and unexpected sounds. She drew the first blueprints at her aunt's Colorado ranch.Wikipedia ↗g57000%Card
06Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney woke one morning in 1964 with a full melody in his head, rushed to the piano, and spent weeks playing it for strangers to confirm he hadn't stolen it. The song became 'Yesterday' — recorded by over 2,200 artists.Wikipedia ↗g56100%Card
07Yo-Yo MaYo-Yo Ma left his 1733 Montagnana cello — valued at $2.5 million — in a New York taxi trunk in 1999. The cab company traced the driver within an hour. He played the cello at the reunion press conference.Wikipedia ↗g55100%Card
08Patti SmithPatti Smith spent years photographing Robert Mapplethorpe's hands — obsessively, serially — because, she wrote, she couldn't stop seeing them. Her 2010 memoir 'Just Kids' won the National Book Award and was written, she said, to keep a promise to a dying man.Wikipedia ↗g55000%Card
09Margaret AtwoodMargaret Atwood co-invented the LongPen — a robotic signing device transmitting her pen strokes in real time from anywhere on earth — so she could "be" at book signings without flying. She filed the patent in 2004 and the company still operates.Wikipedia ↗g54000%Card
10Jane GoodallJane Goodall spent months sitting motionless in Tanzania's Gombe forest until a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard allowed her to approach — the first time a wild chimp accepted a human. She was twenty-six, had no university degree, and had been in Africa five months.Wikipedia ↗g53000%Card