He was admired partly because he was so ordinary, an accidental hero.

ECONOMIST: Alec Campbell

Many ordinary Chinese see him as a hero for his campaign against criminal gangs.

ECONOMIST: Power games

Four soldiers, rifles at rest, stood guard as ordinary New Zealanders said goodbye to a national hero, whose achievements are known around the world.

CNN: Final farewell for Edmund Hillary

The plan had the backing of the French government, but it was financed mostly through public subscription, the personal savings of thousands of ordinary French people who regarded de Lesseps as a hero on a Napoleonic scale.

ECONOMIST: The Panama Canal

The dispatcher, having started out as a klutz so ordinary that he wears a tie and a sleeveless sweater, morphs into an action hero, which is just one of a cluster of wild implausibilities that crowd out the cogency of the film.

NEWYORKER: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

But when it focusses on its nominal hero and his love affair with a worldly German bohemian (played by Sheryl Lee) it seems very ordinary.

NEWYORKER: Backbeat