Millheim Journal. [volume] (Millheim, Pa.) 1876-1984, 1880-04-22
Strong NJ en-.


was crowned with laurels and loaded with
wealth and honors. When Egenetus, in
the ninety second Olympiad, triumphant
in the games, entered Agrigentum, his
native home, he was attended by an escort
of three hundred chariots, each drawn by
two white horses and followed by the
populace, cheering and waving banners.
Milo six times won the palm at both the
Olympic and Pythian games. He is said
to have run mile with four year. old OK
upon his shoulders, and afterward killed
the animal with blow of his fist, and ate
the entire carcass in one day SO great
was his muscular power that he would
sometimes bind cord round his head and
break it by the swelling and pressure of the
veins. An ordinary meal for Milo was
twenty pounds of meat, as much bread and
fifteen pints of wine. Polydamus of Thes-
salonia was of prodigious strength and
colossal height, and, it is said, alone and
without weapons, he killed an enormous
and enraged lion. One day, Git is so re-
corded) he seized bull by one of its hind
feet and the animal only escaped by leav-
ing its hoof in the grasp OF the athlete.
The Roman Emperor Maximinus was up
wards of eight feet in height, and, like
Milo of Crotone, could squeeze to powder
the hardest stone with his fingers and break
the leg or jaw Of horse by kick. HIS
wifes bracelet served him as ring, and his
everyday meal was sixty ponds of meat
and an amphora of wine. Topham, who
was born in London in l7l0, was possessed
of astonishing strength. HIS armplts, hol-
low in the case Of ordinary men, were with
him full of muscles and tendons. He would
take a bar of iron, with its two ends held in
his hands, place the middle of the bar be-
hind the nap of his neck, and then bend
the extremities by main force until they
met together, and bend back the iron
straight again. One night, perceiving a
watchman asleep IN his box, he carried
both the man and his shell to a great dis
tance, and deposited them on the wall of a
church yard. Owing TO domestic troubles,
he committed suicide in the prime of life.
The famous Scanderberg, king of Albania,
who was born III l4l4, was man of great
stature and his feats IN sword exercise has
never been equaled. On one occasion,
with scimitar, he struck his antagonist
such terrible blow that its tremendous
force cleaved him TO the waist. He is said
TO have often cloven in two men who were
clad in armor from head 10 foot. On one
occasion the brother and nephew of GER
tam Ballaban, who had been convicted of
cruelties towards the Albanians, were
brought to him, bound together. Trans
ported with rage he cut them in two with
one stroke of his weapon. Maurice, Count
of Saxony, the hero Of Fontenoy, inherited
the physical vigor of his father, and was
especially noted for tue surprising muscu-
lar power or grip" q his hands. On one
occasion, needing a Uzs-k-screw, he twisted
long iron nail round into the required
shape with his fingers, and with this ca
temporized implement opened a half dozen
bottles or wine. Another time, when
stopping at a village blacksmith shop to
have his horses .shod, he picked up num-
ber of new horse shoes and with his hands
snapped them in two as readily as il made
of glass, mach to the surprise and disgust
of the smith. If history is to be believed,
Phayllus of Crotena could jump a distance
of fifty six feet. This exercise was prac
ticed at the Olympic games and formed
part of the course Of the Pentathlon.
Strut, an English authority on games and
amusements, speaks of Yorkish jumper
named Ireland, whose powers were some
thing marvellous. He was six feet high,
and at the age of eighteen years leaped,
without the aid of a spring over nine
horses ranged side by side. He cleared a
cord extended fourteen feet from the
ground with a bound, crushed a bladder
suspended at height Of sixteen feet, and
on another occasion lightly cleared large
wagor covered with an awning. Colonel
| Ironsde, who lived in India, early in this
century, relates that he met in his travels
an old, white-headed man who with one
leap sprang over the back of an enormous
elephant flanked by SIX camels of the
largest breed. A curious French work,
published in Paris in l745, entitled The
Tracts toward the History of Wonders Per
formed at Fairs, " mentions an Englishman,
who at the fair of st. Germain, in 1924,
leaped over forty people without touching
one of them. In our own day we are
familiar with many remarkable expositions
of strength and endurance. DR.. Wind
ship, with the aid Of straps, lifted weight
of $500 pounds, and with the little finger
of his right hand can raise his body con-
siderable distance from the ground.