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    Nathan Thomson, 2008

    There are few things that can motivate a man to action faster than seeing his mother in danger. The bond between mother and son is a powerful thing indeed. Case in point: the brave act of 9-year-old Nathan Thomson of Fife, Scotland. One March night in 2008, a drunken dockworker named Hugh Clark broke into Nathan’s house and attacked his mother Ena with a knife. Her screams of terror brought young Nathan out of his room. Faced with the horrible sight of his mother under attack, he acted instinctively, jumping on the larger man’s back and trying to pull him off her. The brave boy was slashed multiple times in the face, but his intervention saved his mother’s life. Grotesquely, Clark only got four years in jail for the awful crime.