There’s a saying you’ll see posted all over the Internet over the last year or so that reads, “A wolf doesn’t lose sleep over the opinions of sheep.” It’s a pretty gnarly mantra to live by, but unfortunately, it’s one that very few men generally do.
But when one does live by the sacred code of giving zero fucks, the results are usually glorious. And thus, we present unto you, 8 of history’s greatest zero fucks givers:
Albert Jacka
Albert Jacka was a soldier in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. It was on the infamous Western Front where, on August 7th, 1916, the Germans began to overrun a portion of the line where Jacka just so happened to be hunkered down. Jacka had just returned from a recon mission when two German soldiers tossed a grenade into his trench, instantly killing two of his men. Jacka ran out from the dugout to see what was happening, only to find a large number of German soldiers rounding up a group of Australian prisoners. Jacka, only able to rally a handful of his men, attacked the Germans, eventually turning the tides and taking them captive. Jacka killed at least a dozen Germans during the skirmish.
After receiving the Military Cross and the Victoria Cross for his service and bravery, Jacka returned home to Australia, where he ran a successful import-export business, became the mayor of a city, and a family man. He died at the young age of 39, with a full heart, and balls as big and made-of-steel as ever.
Jack “Mad Jack” Churchill
Newspaper editor, actor, male model, motorcycle enthusiast… These characteristics are all true of Jack “Mad Jack” Churchill’s life and career. Even so, these are not the reasons he makes our list. Rather, Churchill was a British Commando during WWII, where he became famous for charging the enemy with nothing more than a sword, a longbow, and a set of fucking bagpipes. When he was captured by Germans in 1944 after all his men were killed after a botched raid on the island of Brac, he reportedly had been found playing “Will Ye No Come Back Again” on his bagpipes before being knocked out by a grenade.
AND, when he was eventually released from German captivity, he walked nearly 100 miles to Italy, where he met a friendly Allied armored force, and immediately went off to go fight and finish out the war in Burma. What. The. Fuck.
Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
You already know good ol’ Teddy as an American badass for being the 26th president of the United States, a commander of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, and one of the heads on Mount Rushmore. But there’s so much more to his story…
While campaigning in Milwaukee in 1912, Roosevelt was shot by a wood-be assassin named John Flammang Schrank. After noticing that he wasn’t coughing up blood, Roosevelt decided that the bullet, which became lodged in his chest after passing through his eyeglass case and a 50-page book in his breast pocket, had not made it to his lungs, and therefore wasn’t life-threatening. Instead, he gave a 90-minute speech, opening with, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I’ve just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Good ol’ Teddy.
Roy Benavidez
Roy Benavidez is the kind of Green Beret that would make John Rambo crap his pants. He received the Medal of Honor for his courageous acts of valor during The Vietnam War, where he basically fought off an entire North Vietnamese infantry battalion for over six full hours, administering aid to injured soldiers, requesting air strikes from the ground, and [somehow] providing himself cover fire while also loading injured soldiers onto extraction helicopters.
By the end of the ordeal, Benavidez had sustained 37 bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds. After a preliminary examination by a doctor, Benavidez was pronounced dead. As the doctor began zipping up his body bag, Benavidez mustered the strength TO SPIT IN THE DOCTOR’S FACE, IN AN ATTEMPT TO NOTIFY HIM THAT HE WAS NOT, IN FACT, DEAD. Instead, Master Sergeant Raul “Roy” Perez Benavidez lived a full life, dying at the ripe old age of 63.
Samuel Whittemore
You’ve probably never heard of Samuel Whittemore, but that doesn’t make this Revolutionary War hero any less insane. Back in the very beginning of America’s struggle for independence, it was not uncommon for British regiments to be attacked by American patriots and militiamen during their travels.
Such was the case on April 19th, 1775, when Whittemore, a colonial farmer nearing 80 years old, spotted a British brigade on their way to assist in the retreat at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He loaded his musket and, by his 78-year-old self, ambushed the British grenadiers from behind. He killed one soldier, gravely wounded another, and when he got tired of reloading, in a true display of giving absolutely zero fucks, drew his sword and engaged his enemies in close-quarters combat. He was shot in the face, bayoneted several times, and left for dead. When colonial forces found him, he was alive, and still trying to re-load his musket to resume fighting. When doctors said he had zero chance of surviving, he went ahead and lived another 18 years, dying from natural causes, at 96 years old. Why? Because fuck you. That’s why.
Bill Murray
It’d be criminal for us to compose a list of people who live their lives with reckless abandon and a complete disregard for what people think of them without including the man, myth, and legend that is Bill Murray. This rich, famous actor, who has enjoyed all of life’s finest pleasures, has also played kick ball with random strangers, tended bar completely unannounced at Austin’s most popular music festival (and handed out only shots of tequila, regardless of patrons’ actual orders), stole French fries from random McDonald’s patrons (all the while yelling, “No one will ever believe you!”), and showed up to random peoples’ ice cream socials. Call his spot here cliché, but like Bill Murray, we don’t care—He is the undisputed modern king of not giving a fuck.
Michael Malloy
A homeless drunk living in Great Depression-era New York City, Michael Malloy never turned down a free drink. And that’s precisely how, in 1933, five acquaintances that had taken out life insurance policies on Malloy, had intended to kill him. They gave him unlimited credit at a local bar, and when that didn’t work, they filled his drinks with anti-freeze… Then turpentine, then horse tranquilizer, and even rat poison. But alas, Michael Malloy didn’t die. He just kept drinking. And when they fed him poisoned, spoiled sardine-and-nail sandwiches and raw oysters with wood alcohol? He survived. And when they waited for him to pass out drunk one night, then dragged his body out into the cold winter night—temperatures were in the negative teens—and then poured cold water all over him, and left him to freeze to death? He walked into the bar the very next morning and warmed up with a drink. Talk about giving no fucks…
When they did eventually kill Malloy, it was only after sticking a tube down his throat and pumping him with gas for over an hour. They never collected on the insurance policy, because all four men were eventually convicted of murder.
Oh, we almost forgot… They also hit Malloy with a car going over 40 miles an hour, and that, too, failed to kill the remarkable and indestructible man of steel.
Hugh Glass
Leonardo DiCaprio will probably win an Oscar for his performance as famous American frontiersman Hugh Glass in this year’s The Revenant. What a shockingly large amount of people fail to realize, however, is that Hugh Glass was a real guy, and that The Revenant is based on real-life occurrences.
In 1822, Hugh Glass responded to a newspaper advertisement looking for members to embark on a fur-trading expedition. One day, while on scout duty, Hugh Glass was attacked by a massive grizzly bear, who clawed him up like a kitten to a fresh leather couch. Despite the terrible mauling in which the beast shattered Glass’ thigh, Glass was able to kill the bear after punching and stabbing the shit out of it. He literally punched and stabbed the bear to death. When Glass’ team caught up with him, they figured he was as good as dead. The two youngest men in the group were instructed to stay with Glass until he succumbed to his injuries, then bury him and catch up with the team. For one reason or another (for reasons highly debated by historians), the two kids wound up leaving Glass alone to die— with no food, no water, no weapons… Just some bear fur.
Hugh Glass woke up cold, alone, and badly injured, and rather than say, “Oh f*ck this, I’m just gonna lay here and die” he set his own broken leg, treated his various wounds (one gash on his back so deep that his ribcage was visible in plain sight), and proceeded to crawl 200 miles to a friendly tribe of Natives, who helped him heal up. During his journey, when the wounds on his back began to fester, Glass found a rotting tree, laid down in it, and allowed the maggots to eat away his flesh, in order to prevent gangrene from developing.
Basically, Hugh Glass was an OG no fucks giver. At all. Like, at all.
