Ask Lemmy

Salgueiro Maia led a group of soldiers to victory against a fortified position holding all the main leaders of the fascist Estado Novo regime, and then turned power back over to the people.

Last year we celebrated 50 years of democracy in Portugal.

Catalan:

Juan Pujol Garcia

After fleeing fascist spain to Portugal he wanted to help fight the Nazis, so he asked the British to become a spy and was ignored, then wrote to Germany saying he lives in London and wants to help the nazis, and made up a whole fictional spy agency from the comfort of a Portuguese library.

Then he told the British and became a double spy, sending false information. All while getting paid by the nazis to maintain his fictional spies and bribes.

Most importantly he wrote about d day and gave the wrong location to make the nazis focus somewhere else. then waited a few hours to send the correct location so the letter arrives too late.

He helped win D day, and was awarded the Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for it. and also got an apology from the Nazis for getting his vital information too late and got the Nazi iron cross.

best spy story ever

I can't claim him to be from my country, but i think everyone should know about Janusz Korczak, who ran an orphanage for Jewish children in Poland and refused to be save so as to not abandon his children. He was murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp in August 1942 together with the children, who he stood by until their last journey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak#The_Holocaust_and_death

Korczak's diary survived the war; the last entry in it is from August 4.[44] On 5 or 6 (sources vary[44]) August 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 orphans (there is some debate about the actual number: it may have been 196) and about one dozen staff members to transport them to the Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the "Aryan side" by the Polish underground organization Żegota, but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children.[45] On 5 August, he again refused offers of sanctuary, insisting that he would go with the children,[45] asserting his belief: "You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this".

I recommend everyone to read more of his story.

UK:

• Nicholas Winton saved 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the day before WW2.
• Sean Lock was one of the greatest comedians I have ever seen who lost his life to cancer.

Richard Pearse, New Zealand aviation pioneer. He was a farmer by trade, and had a reputation for making crooked furrows because he would read technical books while he plowed. He worked on powered flight at the same time as the Wright Brothers and actually achieved his first powered take-off before they did. It wouldn't be fair to call it a success - his plane was built with no tail section, making it difficult to control in the air. The test flight ended by crashing into a thornbush hedge and Pearse received minor injuries.

I’m American, but more people should know about Alberto Santos-Dumont

Santos-Dumont is a national hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical aeroplane.