Most of you would be too young to remember this.... a plane crashed into the Potomac one winter... it was freezing, snowing, and only two guys were brave enough to take a helicopter out to try and rescue the passengers, who were trapped, sitting on top of the fuselage in the freezing water.... the helicopter guys wer amazed when they lowered the rope to the stricken passengers, because one guy insisted on helping secure the other passengers to the rope to enable them to be lifted off.... no matter how often they passed the rope down, he let someone else go.... in the end he fell of and drowned... to that man, and the guys in the chopper... YOU ARE MY HEROES.....
I have a short list,
But it depends on what you would call a hero. Is a hero someone you would like to trade places with? In my opinion no, its someone that you would never want to be in his or her sitiuation, but if you ever were you would have the fortitude to act in a way simalar to them.
So under that definition,
Mumia Abu-Jamal
and Che Guevera
among some others