Stories of people who took things into their hands and achieved success

What do most people do when they encounter problems? They try to solve them, but not finding a way, they give up. Some people let things take their course, while others seek help. And such people will forever remain a gray mass, those who will be remembered as an ordinary crowd.

Only a small part of humanity does not give up trying to cope with problems, no matter how serious they may seem. They improve not only their own lives but also the lives of others and even influence history.

5 Stories of people who took things into their own hands and achieved success

1. Elon Musk

In 2001, then little-known Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, wanted to purchase rockets for further development on their basis of spaceships. He went to Moscow with Jim Cantrell, a mechanical engineer, to buy Dnepr launch vehicles based on the RS-20 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

At the forum, he met with company representatives and negotiated, but he failed to agree on a purchase, and Musk returned with nothing. He did not give up and returned to the Russian capital, where they paid attention to him this time. However, they asked for an excessive amount of eight million dollars for one rocket, which Elon Musk could not afford.

Then, he decided to create his rockets and founded SpaceX in 2002. Enduring all the jokes about trampolines and other inappropriate humor, Musk moved towards the goal, and finally, on May 30, 2020, the Crew Dragon spacecraft delivered two NASA astronauts into orbit. SpaceX is currently actively developing multistage rockets that are cheaper than buying seats on Russian ships.

2. Dashrat Manji

Darshat Manji was a mining worker in the small village of Gehlaur in India. And to get from the fields to the village, people had to walk along a dangerous, narrow mountain road.

In 1959, Dashrat’s wife, as usual, went to take Manji lunch but stumbled on an uneven road, slipped, and fell off a cliff, receiving serious injuries. After some time, she died, as there was no way to get to the nearest town of Wazirganj, where the hospital was located.

Not wanting anyone else to suffer the same fate, Dashrat picked up a hammer and chisel and began to pave a new road to make the way to Wazirganj safely. He was ridiculed in the village, and even his father ridiculed him for wasting his time.

But Dashrat did not give up. Starting in 1960, he dug a passage in the mountain year after year until he finished it 22 years later, in 1982. Thanks to this, the road to the city was reduced from 55 to 15 kilometers, and a fast and safe way appeared not only for his village but also for about 60 more settlements.

3. Ferruccio Lamborghini

Ferruccio Lamborghini has been interested in technology since childhood and has shown extraordinary abilities in designing mechanisms. The Second World War prevented his further progress in this field, which destroyed the Italian industry.

After the war, realizing there was nowhere to wait for help, he designed a tractor for his father, who was engaged in agriculture. Soon, the rumor about the tractor spread first through the native village of Renazzo and then throughout Italy.

Having founded a company producing agricultural machinery, he earned a lot of money but still loved to make mechanisms. Lamborghini was a fan of sports cars, especially Ferraris. One day, he noticed that the Ferrari 250Gt had problems with the clutch. A similar part was previously used in a Lamborghini tractor but stopped being used due to the clutch’s low reliability.

Then Ferruccio Lamborghini met with Enzo Ferrari and told him about the problem. Enzo, known for his bad temper, not only showed no interest but also insulted Ferruccio, saying that the tractor manufacturer has no right to criticize sports cars.

Then, instead of holding a grudge like most people, Lamborghini decided to surpass Ferrari and create a better sports car. In 1963, he founded a new company, Automobili Lamborghini, and just four months later, he introduced the Lamborghini 350GTV.

From that moment, the history of the legendary brand of cars began, and they consider it an honor to have the richest people on the planet in their garage.

4. Maurice Hilleman

Maurice Hilleman is an American microbiologist who has developed over forty vaccines in his lifetime. He invented one of them for his daughter. In 1963, his eldest daughter fell ill with mumps.

There was no cure for the disease then, and Maurice took the situation into his own hands and developed a vaccine that is still used today. To do this, he took a swab from the back of his daughter’s throat, brought it to the laboratory for cultivation, and, contrary to the rules, began working on creating a vaccine.

And he did it! As modern microbiologists say, it is impossible to imagine such a thing nowadays. In addition, Maurice Hilleman has developed vaccines against measles, hepatitis A and B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia, and hemophilic bacillus. This man dedicated himself to saving humanity. Maurice Hilleman is believed to have saved at least 120 million lives, and the measles vaccine alone saves about a million people a year.

5. Maria Oktyabrskaya

After the war, Maria Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya and her family were evacuated to Tomsk, where she worked as a telephone operator. At the end of the summer of that year, she learned that her husband had been killed in one of the battles in Ukraine. After that, Maria Vasilyevna went to the military enlistment office with a request to send her to the front, but she was refused because of tuberculosis of the cervical vertebra and her advanced age.

But Maria Vasilyevna did not give up and decided to fight to the bitter end. At that time, a program was launched to raise funds for defense equipment construction. Maria Vasilyevna sold all her belongings, earned money for several months, and donated almost everything to the fund.

As a result, she managed to send 50,000 rubles to help fight the Nazis. She wrote a letter to Stalin personally, asking her to make a T-34 tank for her, calling it a “Combat friend” and sending her to the front as a driver of this tank.

Stalin approved the request, after which Maria Vasilyevna underwent tank training and, in 1943, went to the front, where she fought until the beginning of 1944. On March 15, 1944, she died of her injuries, and on August 2 of the same year, she was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.