On July 7, 1946, industrialist and aviator Howard Hughes nearly lost his life while piloting the maiden test flight of the experimental XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft. A severe oil leak caused one of the rear propellers to malfunction and reverse its pitch, sending the high-speed prototype plunging violently into a residential neighborhood in Beverly Hills, California. The aircraft sliced through three houses, completely destroying them before exploding into a massive fireball that left Hughes pinned in the wreckage with life-threatening injuries.
What remains a lesser-known twist is that Hughes was dragged from the burning plane by an active-duty Marine named William L. Durkin, who happened to be visiting a friend in the neighborhood. Because Durkin bravely pulled Hughes from the cockpit just seconds before the main fuel tanks detonated, the billionaire later attempted to express his lifelong gratitude by secretly trying to buy Durkin a brand-new house and repeatedly offering him blank checks, all of which the humble Marine firmly turned down.
Image & video via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
