Unbroken, American Sniper — Fantastic True Stories

There are a number of Americans of which every young boy and girl should learn. George Washington, Abigail Adams, Sam Houston, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, and Louis Zamperini. Zamperini (or “Zamp” to his friends) first achieved celebrity as track athlete in the 1932 Berlin Olympics. A head-strong young boy from Torrance, California, Zamp came out of nowhere to place 8th overall in the 5,000m event.

In 1943, as 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, his bombardier was shot down over the Pacific, more than 800 miles away from Hawaii. The survivors of the crash drifted in their survival raft for 47 days, battling hungry sharks and starvation to eventually land on the Marshall Islands. The Japanese captured them and imprisoned Zamp in a series of increasingly oppressive P.O.W. camps until the camps were eventually liberated and Zamperini returned home as a hero.