Incredible, period. Some pictures for everyone who is curious but is too lazy to search:<p><a href="http://www.theindianblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/dashrath_manjhi11.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.theindianblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/d...</a><p><a href="http://images.jagran.com/inext/Inext_p_SC_2Powerof1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://images.jagran.com/inext/Inext_p_SC_2Powerof1.jpg</a><p><a href="http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/406442_353859024699081_543455915_b.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/406442_35385902...</a>
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
There is a famous Chinese four character idiom about exactly this scenario: 愚公移山 (Yu gong yi shan), or "the foolish old man moves the mountain". Here's a link to the (short) translation of this story: <a href="http://english.cri.cn/4426/2007/01/15/167@185195.htm" rel="nofollow">http://english.cri.cn/4426/2007/01/15/167@185195.htm</a> . I particularly like the role of the "wise man " in this story, who is actually the naysayer here. The names of the people in the story illustrate the common perception of these two roles: the old man YuGong's name means "foolish old man", and "Zhi Sou" means "wise old man". Who's the foolish one after all?
On a similar note, few months ago I posted <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827675" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827675</a> (Indian Man Single-Handedly Plants a 1,360 Acre Forest)
Here he is standing next to his road: <a href="http://s3.hubimg.com/u/3993454_f520.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://s3.hubimg.com/u/3993454_f520.jpg</a><p>And a video about this original Minecraft player: <a href="http://gktalk.blogspot.de/2011/08/man-from-gahlour-dashrath-manjhi.html" rel="nofollow">http://gktalk.blogspot.de/2011/08/man-from-gahlour-dashrath-...</a>
Wow a real-life John Henry <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29</a><p>(though I suppose the legend is based on amazing real workers)
Reminds me a bit of this tunnel, though it had a rather different motivation: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel</a>
That reminds me of my neighbour's wife who on a rainy evening dug a new driveway, with a shovel.<p>This was a bungalow and on one side was their driveway and on the other was the lawn. She dug back ten meters and down about three meters, by hand, with a shovel, in the rain.<p>Yes my neighbours are crazy.
This question on Quora has a reference to many such other stories (including this one)
<a href="http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-gripping-stories-in-human-history" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-gripping-stories-in-h...</a>
I wonder how much it would have cost to do this with mining/tunnelling/etc. modern equipment. And whether it would have been cheaper to pay him $10/hr for 22 years of work, or whether the 'modern' way would have cost more.