Portrait of strongman Eugen Sandow; ca.1889.
Amazing to think that he accomplished that without any modern supplements and an archaic training regime.
But then again, “lifting heavy things up and putting them back down again” is an ancient training method, I suppose. Maybe not that much had changed since then?
Eugen Sandow (April 2, 1867 – October 14, 1925), born Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, was a German pioneering bodybuilder known as the “father of modern bodybuilding”.
Nazis tried to train dogs to talk, read and spell to win World War II… or something:
Rolf was either the smartest dog in history or the center of a scam that fooled a nation—specifically Nazi Germany. Either way, then, he was pretty awesome. According to the Nazis, Rolf could talk. To put this into context, the Nazis backed a lot of hair-brained schemes during World War II, and one of the most hair-brained was trying to train an army of super-intelligent dogs to share their ideals.
The smartest of these “super dogs” was Rolf. Apparently, Rolf was able to talk by tapping his paw against a board and using a sort of special dog Morse code to communicate with humans. It was using this code that he was able to converse, appreciate poetry, express his pride in the Nazi regime, and vent his blinding hatred of the French. Apparently, he even expressed an interest in joining the war effort and fighting on the front lines. We don’t expect you to believe that a dog could talk, but Hitler certainly did. He took a great interest in Rolf, and history’s greatest monster wasting time on the ridiculous notion that the Nazis had created the world’s first racist dog could only possibly be a good thing.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 