"THE MIGHTY ATOM"
- JOSEPH L. GREENSTEIN
The Mighty Atom
Kid Greenstein
The Mighty Atom - The Life and Times of Joseph L. Greenstein
The Spiritual Journey of Joseph L. Greenstein (2nd Edition)
The Mighty Atom
Driving a Nail
Slim The Hammerman
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"He won't make it through the night,"
said the group of doctors, talking about the prematurely-born Joseph Greenstein who was then only a few hours
old.
The year was 1893... the place was a small village in Suvalk, Poland and the infant miraculously did
survived... though his childhood would be marked by sickness and a variety of respiratory ailments.
In fact, at the age 14, a team of doctors again predicted he would surely die from tuberculosis... but he had other ideas.
As fate would have it, one day young Greenstein made his way home from school and saw a poster advertising the circus. He was instantly
captivated, especially by "Champion Volanko, the strongman.
-- he begged his mother to let him stay and watch.
She reluctantly agreed.
Since he had no money, he had to sneak under the tent as he saw other boys doing, but he was caught by a cruel stagehand who
nearly beat him to death -- his eventual rescuer was the very man he came to see, the
strongman of the circus "Champion Volanko," himself. The strongman sympathized with young Joe Greenstein and put him
under his wing.
For the next 18 months, Greenstein traveled the world with
Volanko and the Issakov Brothers' Circus.
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Champion Volanko
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It was during this time that Volanko taught the young Greenstein how to strengthen his body... and his mind.
In time, Joe became a changed man.
Eventually his travels
with Volanko came to an end and Joseph Greenstein returned to his village...
but had changed so much that even his own family didn't recognize him.
They were delighted that he was still alive
and welcomed him with open arms. Within a few years, he found and married his wife, Leah, and began
a career as a wrestler known as Kid Greenstein.
It was not long afterwards that he left for America as a result of the rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.
He settled in Galveston, Texas where he supported his family by working on the docks. Sometime in 1914,
a local Texas man who was obsessed with Greenstein's wife shot him with a pistol in a fit of rage.
The bullet hit Joe Greenstein right between the eyebrows, but instead of killing him, the bullet amazingly only flattened
upon impact.
Near-death experiences have a way of making someone look at things from a different perspective and this incident
sparked Greenstein's interest in awakening the "mental" powers that he possessed.
By
focusing his mind, Joe Greenstein found that he could do things he had never dreamt of before.
Using this new found power, he
gradually developed a number of unusual (and amazing) strongman feats and began traveling the country as a performing strongman.
Unlike most strongmen, Joe was not large -- Standing at 5'5" and weighing in at 140 pounds, Joe Greenstein
dubbed himself "The Mighty Atom" and eventually became one of the 20th century's most
well-known strongmen. He captivated audiences all over the country.
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Announcements for the Mighty Atom's Performances
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The Mighty Atom's Feats:
Driving 20 penny nails through a 2-1/2 inch board with his bare hands
Lying on a bed of nails while supporting a 14-man band on his chest
Seperating a car tire from its rim with nothing but his bare hands
Breaking as many as three chains by expanding his chest
Bending iron bars by holding one end with his teeth and the other end held fixed in a vise
Bending steel bars, spikes and horse shoes with his hands
Biting nails or chains in half with his teeth (he could also perform this feat with a quarter)
Resisting (or pulling) vehicles (buses, plains, automobiles) with his hair
The Mighty Atom pulls a truck with his hair, circa 1928
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One of the Mighty Atom's stops was at Zern's market in Gilbertsville, PA. For years he lectured the crowds on the
benefits of clean living and a healthy diet. Most people ignored him but there was one man who listened... and when
he heard the Atom was in town he always made sure he could be there to hear him speak.
This man was tall, and never said much until one day when the Mighty Atom berated a youthful crowd for their
laziness and unclean living habits. As the Atom spoke, a serious voice came out of the crowd...
"you ain't talkin' about me" said a tall, wirey young man in the back who did not smile.
The Mighty Atom had encountered many different kinds many people during his travels but there was something different about this one, something that he could not put his finger on.
His name was Lawrence "Slim" Farman, and he worked as a stone cutter at Gill Quarries in Fairview Village, Pennsylvania.
For nine hours a day, Slim's job involved swinging a sixteen pound hammer and breaking over one hundred tons of stone. It was this back-breaking
work which had given this man a body of steel, cable-strong arms and a resolve as strong and solid as iron...
The Mighty Atom invited Slim up on stage to prove he was different than all the rest. The Atom handed him a spike and told him to bend it -- his form was crude, but he did it, the
first time anyone who had been invited up on stage had done it.
That day, Slim began to take his health seriously and realizing the strength potential,
became a student of the Mighty Atom.
At their first meeting, The Mighty Atom became Slim's mentor and a short time later Slim demonstrated his prowess at a certain kind of leverage feat with a sledge hammer. Slim
could lift a heavy sledge hammer from the floor to a vertical position while only holding the farthest edge of the handle...a feat which the Atom could not duplicate. Slim was able
to demonstrate several other difficult leverage feats with these sledge hammers as well.
As time passed under the Mighty Atom's tuteladge, Slim became stronger and the weight of these hammers grew...
Twenty years later at Madison Square Garden, in front of 21,000 screaming fans, Slim the Hammerman performed a world-record front lever
lift with a pair of hammers - 56 pounds on 31 inch shafts, for a total weight of 1,736 inch pounds on each of his wrists!
The torch had been passed -
with this feat Slim had taken his rightful place in history as a new link to the Golden Age of Strongmen... he was now the "King of the Old-Time Strongmen."
See for yourself this amazing feat in Slim The Hammer Man's Old Time Strength DVD
For more information about Slim The Hammer Man and his training methods,
click here
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