Chris Hadfield is probably the coolest person on this planet:
He was commander of the International Space Station
Shortly before his tour of duty ended and he returned to Earth, he played guitar and sang in the first music video in space, and it's really good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
As a military test pilot, he invented and tested procedures to get out of a death spiral/spin in F-18s. He purposefully "put his own jet out of control around 120 times". Later, once he "accidentally had an F-18 in an out of control spin, and the recovery procedures worked".