Some of us die from a scratch which gets infected, others are a little harder to kill and then there are those who are incredibly hard to kill. They are the ones I would like to talk about. You may already know about some of them, but I think there might be a surprise for some people.

Rasputin was Russian and I will pick up his story where the assassination attempts were made. Rasputin had healed a child and a short time later he was summoned to the court. The purpose was to visit the son of the Czar. It seems he was suffering from a bleeding disease, he had hemophilia B and none of the doctors knew how to treat it. The tsarina had convinced her husband to let Rasputin try and cure him. The boy began to recover. When he had a relapse and Rasputin was not there, he sent a telegram saying the boy would recover, but to keep the doctors away from him and she did. In 1914 he went outside and was attacked by a woman with a dagger who stabbed him in the stomach, just above the belly button. He beat her off with a stick he found. Rasputin recovered in six weeks. The Czar had sent his own personal doctor to help him. Another plan to kill Rasputin was conceived. He was poisoned, but it didn’t kill him, because he had been taking small amounts of poison to make himself immune to the poison they used. Rasputin was shot in the back by a noble. After being shot in the back three more people came along and each one shot him again, but Rasputin lived. They had wrapped his body in a carpet and threw it into the freezing Neva River, but when his body was found it was obvious he had tried to claw his way out of the carpet.

It has been said George Washington, the father of our country, led a charmed life. This was said because of all the close calls he had with death. You can imagine he was one of the premier targets during the Revolutionary War, but even before that he had some close calls. During the French and Indian War poor George had two horses shot out from under him. When he examined his coat he noticed there were four bullet holes in it and yet he was unscathed. It is also said during the Battle of Princeton, Washington was on his horse and in front of his troops and ordered them to fire on the enemy. A burst of fire released a cloud of smoke and when it cleared Washington was still on his horse unhurt, every soldier had managed to avoid shooting him by mistake.

One person who was truly feared in his time was Blackbeard the pirate, who was actually Edward Teach. It was said he was extremely tall, had a long black beard and when he raided a ship he embedded wicks in his beard and lit them so his beard would be smoking. The governor of Virginia sent Robert Maynard out with two ships to capture or kill Blackbeard. A huge battle progressed and the outnumbered Blackbeard fought like a demon. Maynard tried to stab the pirate king, but the sword broke on Blackbeard’s chest. The pirate was shot at least five times, but this didn’t seem to slow him down until finally Maynard was able to cut his head off.

Another very hard to kill person was Gabriel Garcia Moreno. He was the president of Ecuador in the 19th century. He was attacked by a group of assassins who were armed with machetes. They cut off his left arm and right hand. Believe it or not, at that point he stood up to face them. They took out their guns and shot him six times. He was still alive and wrote in his own blood on the ground, “God does not die.” This was a reference to the fact he was Catholic and felt it was sinful for non-Catholics to hold government office.

Now I would like to reference a small army of men who were very hard to kill. They were the 300 Spartans. As they held the pass at Thermopylae against the hoards of the Persian forces, they were heavily wounded over time and yet they continued to fight against all odds. They were not going to succumb to wounds unless they just could not stand and fight anymore. There were multiple arrow wounds along with sword and spear wounds, but this didn’t stop most of them. Finally the Persians found a path behind them and sent thousands of men at them from both the front and back, overcoming the group of Greek fighters protecting their rear.

Leon Trotsky is an interesting case of hard to kill. Trotsky was an associate of Lenin. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, Lenin put Trotsky in charge of the Red Army. He also oversaw the branches of the Soviet government. He was expelled from the Communist party after the death of Lenin. He wanted to enter the U.S., but was denied so he settled in Mexico. Stalin decided he needed to be killed so he sent an assassin after him. The assassin hit him in the head with an axe which became embedded in his skull. He then stood up and attacked the assassin. He still had the axe in his head. The assassin was subdued with the help of bodyguards and Trotsky died the next day.

The last person I would like to mention who was hard to kill has one of the most incredible stories of all. His name is Matt Suter. While the others I have talked about were all attacked by other humans, this guy was attacked by Mother Nature. He was in his grandmother’s trailer and a storm broke out. If you know anything about trailers you know they are not good in high winds. The storm then turned into a tornado and much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, only this time in real life, he was sucked into the tornado and traveled in the air at 150 miles an hour or more and was blown about a quarter of a mile before being deposited on the ground. He had been unconscious and when he woke up he had only a couple of scratches and bruises. No human had ever traveled this far in a tornado and lived.