Gao Xuan of the Kaifeng Jewish community in Ming dynasty China, who rescued the Torah scrolls from the water when the synagogue catastrophically flooded in 1642
The discovery of phosphorous by German alchemist and Thirty Years War veteran Hennig Brand: "Phosphorus must have been awe-inspiring to an alchemist: it was a product of man, and seeming to glow with a 'life force' that did not diminish over time...." - imagine spending years boiling thousands of gallons of piss in your alchemical basement lab trying to produce gold or the philosopher's stone or whatever and instead you make the first discovery of an element since antiquity