In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, strongmen took the world by storm. Crowds filled music halls and circuses to witness spectacular feats of strength, each performed by self-proclaimed Strongest Men in the World.

Audiences were unimpressed with weightlifting specifics, such as form, technique, or exact weight. They had more practical concerns:

Can you carry a horse on your shoulders?

Can you break a chain with your chest?

Can you support a car with your windpipe?

Can you carry a baby elephant up a ladder?

With every strongman claiming to be the best in the world, each had to develop his own specialty to stand out.

John Holtum was famous for catching a 50-pound iron ball fired out of a cannon. (He lost three fingers on his first attempt.)

Alexander Zass was renowned for bending steel bars, a talent which presumably came in handy when he escaped from an Austrian POW camp.

Siegmund Breitbart could pound a railroad spike through five inch-thick oak planks with his bare hands. In his final show, he pounded it all the way into his leg, leading to fatal blood poisoning.

These performances inspired countless amateurs. The muscle-building systems developed and sold by famous strongmen such as Eugen Sandow eventually gave rise to the modern bodybuilding movement, which lacks the same exciting potential for death or maiming.