20 Historical Figures You Didn’t Know Were Missing Limbs

Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson is one of the most famous commanders in the British Navy; he is known for his decisive victories at sea against Napoleon’s forces in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During an assault on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, a musket ball struck Nelson as he was preparing to disembark, shattering the humerus of his right arm so severely that surgeons had to amputate it that very night, without anesthesia. He resumed active command a few months later and went on to win some of Britain’s greatest naval victories, most notably the legendary Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where he died just as victory was secured.

The father of Alexander the Great and the architect of Macedonia’s rise to power, Philip II ascended to the throne in 359 B.C. and reformed his country’s army by standardizing its weaponry, instituting rigorous training programs, and establishing a permanent professional army. During the siege of the Greek city of Methone in 354 B.C., an enemy arrow struck Philip’s right eye; surgeons then completely removed the damaged eye during a procedure that must have been excruciatingly painful by the standards of the time. Philip continued to lead his army into battle and expand his empire for nearly two more decades, which speaks volumes about his ability to endure pain.

Henry William Paget, better known as Lord Uxbridge, was a decorated British cavalry officer who had fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and had risen to the rank of lieutenant general by the time of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. One of the final cannon shots of that battle tore off his leg as he stood alongside the Duke of Wellington; the injury was so severe that a complete amputation was the only viable option. What happened next constitutes one of the strangest epilogues in military history: a local resident reportedly buried the severed limb in his garden and eventually turned it into a small war memorial, transforming the pilgrimage to Lord Uxbridge’s leg into a sort of fashionable tourist attraction.

Peter Stuyvesant is best known for having served as governor-general of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial territory that would become New York, but he had lost his leg several years before taking on that role. While leading an attack on a Spanish fort in the Caribbean in 1644, a cannonball struck him with such force that it tore off the lower part of his right leg, requiring immediate surgical amputation. Stuyvesant was subsequently fitted with a wooden prosthesis, which earned him the enduring nickname “Peg-Leg Pete”—a label that has clung to his historical reputation far more tenaciously than his considerable achievements as a colonial administrator.

Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson earned his famous nickname during the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, when his composure in the face of relentless Union fire was so remarkable that his colleague, General Barnard Bee, compared him to a stone wall. During the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, however, Jackson was accidentally shot by his own Confederate troops as he was returning from a nighttime reconnaissance mission, and the wounds to his left arm were so severe that surgeons had to amputate it that very night. He died eight days later of pneumonia, and his arm was buried separately from the rest of his body at Ellwood Manor in Virginia; this means that there are technically two burial sites that can claim to hold a part of the famous general.

One of the most famous theater actresses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sarah Bernhardt received rave reviews throughout Europe for her performances in plays by Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo. In 1905, during a performance of La Tosca, a staged fall from a castle tower went wrong because the landing area had not been properly prepared; the resulting leg injury never fully healed, and a decade later, the limb developed gangrene and had to be amputated. Even after losing her leg, Bernhardt continued to tour, performed for soldiers on the front lines of World War I, and kept working almost until her death in 1923.

When Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, Virginia Hall, a native of Maryland, was already working as an ambulance driver in the French army before fleeing to England and joining the Special Operations Executive, a British intelligence agency that sent her back to occupied France to help establish the Resistance. Years before the war, however, Hall had accidentally shot herself in the foot while hunting in Turkey; gangrene set in, and her foot had to be amputated, leaving her with a prosthetic foot she affectionately named “Cuthbert.” The Gestapo relentlessly hunted her down across Western Europe, tracking her mainly by her distinctive gait; she was nicknamed “the limping lady” by both her enemies and her allies, and ultimately became the first and only civilian woman to receive the Distinguished Service Cross for her service during World War II.

In his early twenties, Royal Air Force pilot Douglas Bader was already performing daring aerial maneuvers with remarkable skill and confidence. In 1931, an accident during an aerobatic demonstration left him with such severe injuries to both legs that surgeons were forced to amputate them—one above the knee and the other below. Bader was then fitted with two prosthetic legs and taught himself to walk unaided in just six months. The RAF initially discharged him despite his recovery, but when World War II broke out, he was reinstated, took command of No. 242 Squadron, flew numerous combat missions, and was not captured until his plane was shot down over occupied Europe in 1941.

Before the Civil War disrupted his plans, John Wesley Powell had already traveled much of the Mississippi River on his own and had earned a reputation as one of the most determined naturalist-explorers in the United States. During the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Powell was struck by enemy fire, sustaining such severe injuries to his right arm that a field surgeon had to amputate it below the elbow a few days later. Once he had recovered, Powell returned to active duty, was promoted to the rank of major, and then led a historic 99-day expedition through the Colorado River Valley to the Grand Canyon, before becoming director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Few mercenary knights in early 16th-century Bavaria were as sought-after as Götz von Berlichingen, who made a career out of fighting on behalf of rival Bavarian dukes. During a battle in 1504, a cannonball struck him with such force that it completely severed his right hand; but rather than withdraw from the fight, he had two successive iron prostheses made to replace it. The second, more sophisticated version was equipped with spring-loaded fingers, leather straps, and hinged joints that would have allowed him to hold a sword or write with a quill; this remarkable feat of craftsmanship earned von Berlichingen the nickname “Götz with the Iron Hand,” which he still bears today in history books.

Christopher Newport commanded the Susan Constant, the lead ship of the 1606 expedition that founded the Jamestown colony in Virginia, one of the earliest and most significant English colonies in North America. Prior to that, however, Newport had spent years as a privateer attacking Spanish and Portuguese merchant ships in the Caribbean, and during a raid on two Spanish ships in 1590, he lost most of his right arm in battle. For the rest of his life, including during all his famous colonial voyages, Newport wore a hook or a prosthetic in place of his hand; the large bronze statue erected in his honor at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, incidentally, completely omits this detail.

Having served as president of Mexico on several occasions during the tumultuous 19th century, Antonio López de Santa Anna is undoubtedly best known internationally for leading the assault on the Alamo in 1836. Two years later, during the brief Franco-Mexican conflict known as the “Pâtisserie War,” a French cannonball inflicted such severe injuries to his leg that it had to be amputated below the knee. Santa Anna arranged for his amputated limb to be buried with military honors during an official ceremony, but during a political uprising in 1844, an angry mob dug it up—an episode that is undoubtedly among the strangest events to have befallen an amputated limb in all of recorded history.

FitzRoy Somerset, who later became the 1st Baron Raglan and commanded British forces during the Crimean War, was present at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 as a young aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington. Enemy fire during the battle inflicted such severe injuries to his right arm that surgeons were forced to perform an immediate amputation; according to historical accounts, Somerset reportedly asked the attending physicians to retrieve the severed arm after the procedure so that he could retrieve a ring from one of his fingers. He continued his military career for decades afterward, eventually rising to the rank of field marshal, although his command of British troops in the Crimea drew sharp criticism throughout the 1850s.

Isoroku Yamamoto is generally remembered as the Japanese admiral who orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but by that time, his naval career had already spanned several decades. During the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, an explosion cost him two fingers on his left hand, an injury whose effects he bore for the rest of his life. Yamamoto went on to become commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet and one of the most strategically important naval figures of the 20th century, before Allied forces intercepted and shot down his plane in 1943.

Spanish Admiral Blas de Lezo undoubtedly holds the most extreme record for war injuries among all military commanders in history, having lost limbs with a frequency that is hard to believe. He lost his left leg at the Battle of Málaga in 1704, lost sight in his left eye during the Siege of Toulon in 1707, and lost the use of his right arm in Barcelona in 1714; by the time he was in his early thirties, he had lost a leg, was blind in one eye, and had only partial use of one arm. Despite all this, de Lezo successfully led the defense of Cartagena de Indias in 1741 against a massive British fleet, repelling Admiral Edward Vernon’s forces in one of the most remarkable defensive victories in naval history.

As the leader of the Hussite forces across Bohemia during a series of religious and political conflicts in the early 15th century, Jan Žižka had already lost an eye long before he became one of the most famous military leaders in history. During the siege of Rábí Castle in 1421, an arrow caused him to lose sight in his remaining eye, leaving him completely blind; rather than relinquish command, Žižka continued to fight and win battles. He is widely regarded as one of the few military leaders in history to have remained undefeated in battle, and he continued his campaigns without any vision until his death during the siege of Přibyslav in 1424.

Best known as the Russian field marshal who thwarted Napoleon’s plans during the French invasion of Russia in 1812, Mikhail Kutuzov led a military career marked as much by his ability to survive catastrophic injuries as by his strategic genius. He was shot in the head near his right eye during the Russo-Turkish War of 1774, permanently losing his sight in that eye; what makes this story almost unbelievable is that he suffered an almost identical injury 14 years later and survived that as well. Kutuzov continued to serve at the highest levels of the Russian army for decades and was awarded the title “Smolensky” for his role in driving Napoleon’s forces out of Russia.

James Hanger holds the grim distinction of being, according to sources, the first soldier from either side to undergo an amputation during the Civil War; he lost his leg after being struck by a cannonball during a skirmish at Philippi, Virginia, in June 1861. Unsatisfied with the simple wooden stump provided by army surgeons, Hanger spent his convalescence designing a far more functional prosthetic leg made from barrel staves, featuring hinged joints at the knee and ankle; the Virginia state government eventually commissioned him to manufacture prosthetics for other soldiers who had undergone amputations. After the war ended, Hanger founded a prosthetics company that became one of the most influential in American history, and the Hanger Clinic is still in operation today across the country.

In 1933, Wiley Post became the first man to fly solo around the world, completing the journey in just under eight days and thus making aviation history. What makes this feat even more remarkable is that Post accomplished it with only one eye; he had lost his left eye in an accident at an oil field in 1926 and had used the compensation he received from workers’ compensation to invest in an airplane and pursue his ambitions as a pilot. Post went on to develop the first pressurized flight suit, a feat that laid the essential groundwork for high-altitude aviation, before losing his life in a plane crash in Alaska in 1935 alongside his passenger, the comedian Will Rogers.

More than 1,500 years before Götz von Berlichingen made his iron hand famous throughout Europe, a Roman general named Marcus Sergius Silus was already doing something remarkably similar. Silus lost his right hand in battle during the Second Punic War against Carthage in the 3rd century B.C. and had an iron prosthetic hand made so he could continue fighting; ancient Roman records also describe him as having been wounded in battle no fewer than 23 times during his career. He is said to have used this iron hand to grip his shield in battle and to have continued leading his troops through numerous campaigns; his story was later cited by Roman writers as an example of the endurance they considered a quintessentially Roman virtue.