10 People You Probably Didn’t Know Made a Positive Impact on the Planet
History doesn’t remember them all so fondly.
We’re all aware of the good deeds done by the likes of Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa, but Benedict Arnold? Wasn’t he the guy whose name, like Judas Iscariot’s, is synonymous with traitor? History is filled with unlikely heroes and heroines — some of whom have been cast as villains — who actually did at least one thing to help improve life on Mother Earth.
One moral of the stories that follow is this: It’s never too late, until it is, for some of our least-favorite politicians to reserve an asterisk for their post-mortem reputations.
Benedict Arnold
His name has come to be synonymous with “traitor,” but there was a lot more to Arnold than his disloyalty to the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. In fact, during the early years of the conflict, before he defected to the redcoat side in 1780, Arnold was hailed as a hero.
The general helped capture Britain’s Fort Ticonderoga with Ethan Allen and Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, and his victory at Saratoga in 1777 played a pivotal role in getting France to join the rebel war effort. Arnold also built one of the earliest U.S. Naval fleets, which fought a losing battle at Valcour…
