I'll start posting specific entries and people from other sites.
Tsutsui Jomyo Meishu: "Tired and worn down, he slowly removed his armor. Upon examination, he found sixty-three dents, including five arrows that were still lodged in the metal plates. Jomyo Meishu, the man who had just single-handedly killed twenty-seven men and wounded dozens more, simply laughed, put his priestly garments back on, and walked off the field of battle, quietly chanting Buddhist hymns to himself and he went."
Saitō Musashibō Benkei: "It is said that the soldiers were afraid to traverse the bridge to confront him, and all that did met swift death at the hands of the gigantic man. Long after the battle should have been over, the soldiers noticed that the arrow-riddled, wound-covered Benkei was standing still. When the soldiers dared to cross the bridge and look more closely, the giant fell to the ground, having been dead in a standing position for some time before that."
The Viking at Stamford Bridge: "Swords shattered on impact with his chain mail, terrible blows rained upon his chest and arms failed to elicit even the slightest wince of pain, and this ferocious barbarian cut a swath of destruction in his wake, wading through these experienced, professional warriors like a Japanese movie monster plowing through a swimming pool full of strawberry Jell-O. Dismembered appendages and decapitated corpses littered the battlefield, the river itself ran red with the blood of fallen men, and the bridge soon appeared as though a schlocky Halloween prop store had just exploded upon it."
Simo Häyhä: "...Finally, on 2 March 1940, some Soviet bastard got a lucky shot off and popped Simo Häyhä in the jaw with an explosive bullet. Häyhä fell into a coma and was pulled off the field by his comerades. He would finally awake eleven days later, on the same day that the Winter War ended. He would go on to live to the ripe old age of 97.
...Throughout the war, Häyhä raked in a total of 505 confirmed sniper kills (in some sources he is credited with 542). On top of this, he also mowed down two hundred men with a Suomi 9mm submachine gun, bringing his total kill count to over 700 men in under 100 days."
Justinian II: "But even though his armies were doing an excellent job of turning wild hordes of rampaging savages into sirloin chuck ground beef and the ruler of the most powerful nation in the Islamic World was sending him a fat welfare check every month, Justinian II was still pretty much utterly despised... This group of usurpers...roughed the Emperor up, punched him in the solarplexus a couple times, cut off part of his nose, slit his tongue down the middle, executed all of his closest advisors and exiled him.
...Together with his new allies, Justinian rode out for the gleaming spires of Constantinople. His force was too small to penetrate the massive walls of the heavily-fortified city, but like any good diabolical madman hell-bent on the destruction of his enemies, Justinian had a plan. He knew about an old abandoned aqueduct that ran into the heart of downtown Constantinople, so in the middle of the night he and his men snuck into town through a series of secret passages...The next morning, ten years after he had been deposed, Justinian once again took a seat on his blood-soaked throne."
Yogender Singh Yadav: "For his bravery on Tiger Hill, the Indian Army posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra (the highest award for bravery) to Yogender Singh Yadav. The problem is that Yadav actually lived through the battle. He received notification of his “posthumous” award from his hospital bed, as he was recovering from a broken arm, a broken leg, and somewhere between five and fifteen gunshot wounds to various parts of his body. Apparently, nobody that heard the story believed that he could have possibly survived."
Baba Deep Singh: "Baba Deep Singh launched himself at the commander of the Mughal garrison and both men delivered terrible blows at one another, kind of like the intro to Ninja Gaiden on the old-school Nintendo. The Mughal's head slid off of his neck onto the floor with a disgusting squish. Baba Deep Singh didn't fare much better -- his head had been almost completely severed from his body. The only thing holding his cranium upright was his left hand.
...He kept fighting, holding his barely-attached head onto his torso with one hand and hacking people in half with his other."
That site also has an entry for
Rasputin, who the OP covered already.
If feats of survival can extend to leadership, instead of of individual, this guy is probably the most awesome person you've never heard of:
Zhang Xun (taken from Battle of Yongqui): "After about 40 days of siege, news reached Yongqiu that Chang'an had fallen to An Lushan. This was a major blow to morale of Zhang Xun's army. Six of Zhang Xun's elite soldiers suggested that he surrender. Zhang Xun pretended to agree. In the following morning, he beheaded these six elite soldiers in front of the whole army and a portrait of the Tang emperor, under charges of treason. This once again strengthened the morale of the army.
...Eventually, Linghu Chao retreated his forces to modem day Kaifeng with less than 20,000* men. After about 4 months of battle, Zhang Xun's much smaller army earned a decisive victory over the rebels."
*Out of an original 40,000. Zhang Xun only had 2000 soldiers total.
Also, from
here, this is mentioned: "During the Battles of Yongqiu and Suiyang, the Tang soldiers in Yongqiu were running out of arrows. Zhang Xun ordered about 1,000 scarecrows to be made. At night, soldiers put their own armor onto the scarecrows, and hung them down from the Castle walls. Yan forces saw this and shot many arrows at the scarecrows, since they thought they were Tang soldiers. By the time the Yan forces found out what happened, the Tang troops had already received about 200,000 arrows. When this happened again later, Yan soldiers did not shoot one single arrow at them. But these dark figures were real Tang soldiers, who quickly attacked the sleeping Yan ranks. The vast Yan forces were forced to retreat from their position."
See also:
Battle of Yongqiu and
Battle of Suiyang.
