The UnlikelyOnes
True stories of unlikely heroes
Short true stories of courage, survival and kindness, with a source for every fact.
The stories
Nine true stories
A medic who wouldn’t carry a gun, a stewardess who survived the Titanic, an 11-year-old who wrote to Abraham Lincoln. Open any story to see the source behind each fact and the credit for every photo.
Zipped Into a Body Bag, Still Alive
A medic with only a knife saved at least eight men, then had to prove he wasn’t dead.
Sources & photo credits
Miss Unsinkable
A stewardess who survived the Titanic, then the sinking of its sister ship, the Britannic.
Sources & photo credits
Houston, We’ve Had a Problem
An explosion on the way to the Moon, and a fix made from plastic and duct tape.
Sources & photo credits
The Ship Crushed by Ice
Their ship was crushed by Antarctic ice. Not one of the 28 men was lost.
Sources & photo credits
The Medic Who Refused to Carry a Gun
Treated as a coward for refusing to carry a gun, he saved about 75 men on Okinawa.
Sources & photo credits
The Landing That Almost Didn’t Happen
Alarms, boulders and fuel running low: the first Moon landing nearly went wrong.
Sources & photo credits
The Raid That Freed More Than 750
She couldn’t read or write, yet she led a raid that freed more than 750 people.
Sources & photo credits
The Girl Who Told Lincoln to Grow a Beard
An 11-year-old told Abraham Lincoln to grow a beard, and he did.
Sources & photo credits
The Night the Trenches Sang
Enemies in the trenches put down their guns at Christmas to sing carols and swap gifts.
Sources & photo creditsAbout
Real people. Real records.
The Unlikely Ones tells short, true stories about people nobody expected much of, and the moments they proved everyone wrong. Here is how we make them.
True stories
Every story really happened. Each one starts as a fact ledger, and nothing goes into the script that we can’t source.
Our own scripts and narration
We write every script ourselves, and every Short has our own narration and original music.
Public-domain archive photos
Real photographs from NASA, the US Army, the Library of Congress and other archives, all in the public domain and all credited.
Sources for every fact
Each story has its own page listing the source behind every fact, with notes where accounts disagree.
Contact
Say hello
Email us at hello@unlikelyones.com, or leave a comment on a Short. Think we got a fact wrong? Tell us, with a source if you can, and we’ll look into it. For partnerships: business@unlikelyones.com.