FAMOUS FEATS OF STRENGTH.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3078, 9 May 1881, Page 4

FAMOUS FEATS OF STRENGTH.

Among the Greeks the successful athlete •was crowned with laurels and loaded down ■with wealth and honors. When Egenetus in the ninety-second Olympiad, triumphant in game 3 entered Agrigentum, his native home, he was attended by an escort of 300 chariots, each drawn by two white horses, aad 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 a mile with a four-year-old ox upon his shoulders, and afterwards killed tho animal with his fisfc, and ate the entire carcass in one day. So great was his muscular power that he would sometimes bind a cord round his head and break it by the swelling and pressure of his veins. An ordinary meal for Milo was 201b of meat, as much bread, and fifteen pints of wine. Polydamus, of Thessalia, was of prodigious strength and collossal height, and it is said alone and without weapon, killed an enormous enraged lion. One day (it is recorded) he seized a bull by one of its hind feet, the animal escaped by leaving the hoof in the grasp of the athlete. The Roman Emperor Maximus was upwards of Bft in height, and, like Milo of Crotona, could squeeze to powder the hardest, stone with his fingers, and break the leg or jaw of a horse by a rick. His wife's bracelet served him as a ring, and his every-day meal was 601b of meat and an amphora of wine.

While a prisoner in Germany, Richard I. accepted an invitation to a boxing match ■with the son of his gaoler. He received the first blow, which made him stagger ; but, recovering, he killed his antagonist with a blow of his fisfc on the spot. Topham, who was born in London in 1710, was possessed of astonishing strength. His armpits, hollow in the case of ordinary men, wore with him full of muscle ana tendons. He would take a bar of iron, with its two ends held in his hands, place the middle of the bar behind 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 distance and deposited them on the wall of a churchyard. Owing to domestic troubles, he committed . suicide in the- prime of life. The famous Shanderburg, king of Albania, who was born 1414, was a man of great stature, and his feats in sword exercise have never been equalled. On one occasion, . with a scimitar, he struck hit* antagonist such a bknv that his tremendous force cleaved him to the waist. He is said to have often cloven in two men who were clad in armour froai head to foot. On one occasion, needing a corkscrew, he twisted a long iron nail round in the required shape with hi? fingers, and with this extemporized implement opened half a dozen bottles of wine. Another time, when stopping at a village blacksmith's shop to have his horse shod, he picked up a number of horse shoes, and with his hands snapped them in two as readily, as if made of glass,, much to the surprise and disgust of the* smith.

If history is to be believed', Phayllus, of Crotona, could jump a distance- of fifty-six feet. .The exercise was practised at the Olympic Games, and formed part of the course of the Pencathion. Strutt an English, authority on games and amusements, speaks of a Yorkshire jumper named Ireland, •whose powers were something marvellous, He was 6ft. high, and at the age of. 18 , leaped, without the aid of a spring-board, over'uine horses ranged side by side. He '■ cleared a cord extended 14ft. from the I ground with a* bound, crushed with his ; foot a bladder'suspended at the height of 16ft.. and on aflother occasion lightly cleared ft waggon covered wiffian 1 awning. Colonel Ironside, who lived in India early in this century, relates that he met in his travels an old white-haired man, who, with' one leap cleared the back of an enormous elephant flanked by six camels of the largest breed:. A curious French work, published in 1745,.. ij entitled " The Tracts towards the History of- 'j Wonders performed at Fairs,' mentions aw ) Englishman who, at the Fair of St. Ger- j main in 1745, leaped over forty people without touching one of them. In our own days we are familiar with many remarkable expositions of strength and endurance. Dr Winship, with the aid of straps, lifted a weight of 35001b5., and with the little finger of his right hand could raise his body a considerable distance from the ground.— Brentano's Monthly.