http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_MacAskillAngus Mňr MacAskill, frequently referred to as Giant MacAskill (1825-August 8, 1863), was known as the world's largest "true" giant (normal proportions, no growth abnormalities). The 1981 Guinness Book of World Records lists Angus as the tallest natural giant who ever lived, the strongest man who ever lived, and the man having the largest chest measurements of any non-obese man (80inches).
Giant MacAskill with General Tom Thumb in mid 1800s.MacAskill was born on the Isle of Berneray in the Sound of Harris, Scotland, and emigrated to Nova Scotia at a young age. After several years in Stornoway, Outer Hebrides with his family, they finally settled in the fishing community of Englishtown, Cape Breton Island somewhere between 1830 and 1835. As a child he was said to be of "normal" stature, but in entering his adolescence he began to grow rapidly and by his 20th year had attained 7 ft 4 in (223 cm), eventually reaching 7 ft 9 in (236 cm) within another year or two. His weight was 425 pounds, his shoulders 44 in. wide, and the palm of his hand 8 in. wide and 12 in. long. In 1863 he was wearing boots 17 1/2 in. long. He had deep-set blue eyes and a musical, if somewhat hollow voice. Despite his huge size he was perfectly proportioned. He was known in his home town as St. Ann's "Gille Mňr" or Big Boy. He was also known to many as The Cape Breton Giant or Giant MacAskill.
MacAskill was well known for incredible feats of strength such as lifting a ship's anchor weighing 2800 lb. to chest height, and an ability to carry barrels weighing over 300 lb. apiece under each arm or reputedly able to lift a hundredweight (50kg) with two fingers and hold it at arms length for ten minutes. People also claimed to see Angus lift a full-grown horse over a four-foot fence, without breaking a sweat.
In 1849 he entered show business and went to work for P.T. Barnum's circus, appearing next to General Tom Thumb. Queen Victoria heard stories about MacAskill's great strength and invited him to appear before her to give a demonstration at Windsor Castle, after which she proclaimed him to be "the tallest, stoutest and strongest man to ever enter the palace", and presented him with two gold rings in appreciation.[1]
He would sometimes jog down the street with a 300-pound barrel of pork under each arm to the admiring whistles of bystanders.[2] To win a bet with some French sailors he lifted an anchor weighing 2700 pounds to his shoulder and walked down the wharf with it. [3] Another time when Big Angus was about fourteen he went on a fishing boat to North Sydney (a small village in Cape Breton Island), and the crew took him along to a dance. The Big Boy had gone ashore without shoes and in old clothes and was sitting near the door watching because dancing was frowned upon by the strict Presbyterian elders of St. Ann's. One of the dancers was a young man from town who danced over with his pretty lassie and stepped on Angus' bare toe. The big, red-faced boy quickly pulled his feet out of the way but bystanders laughed. Angus became absorbed in the dancing and unconsciously put his feet out again. The dandy stepped on the boy's toe again. For a moment it looked as if there would be a fight for the fishermen who had brought Angus along would have joined in. Angus turned red and clenched his fists but remained seated while the bully laughed. The third time his heel came down, the Big Boy jumped up and his fist swept up to his tormentor's jaw. That gentleman landed in the middle of the floor- and was unconscious for so long they thought he was dead. [4]When the captain returned to his schooner he found Angus on his knees praying that he had not killed the man.
The fishermen of St. Ann's envied Big Angus' strength. While they laboriously bailed their boats, Gille Mňr set his weight under his half ton boat, tipped it on its beam ends and out spilled the bilge water! Singlehanded, he set a forty-foot mast into a schooner as easily as a farmer set a fence post in a hole.
John A. Morrison of South Gut of St. Ann's, told James Gillis that one evening at twilight when he was returning from his nets Angus called to the fishermen on the shore to help him pull his heavy boat up the steep slipway. The men thought they would play a trick on the Giant and carry it right up over the hill into a pool. At high water mark Angus said: " That will do, thank you, " but the crowd pretended not to hear and kept on. Big Angus grabbed the boat - which was pulled to pieces.
A visitor to the neighbourhood, a captain who had come on one of the American fishing vessels which came to St. Ann's to buy bait, challenged Angus to a wrestling match. St. Ann's Big Boy refused. When the three hundred pound visitor taunted him, the Cape Bretoner lost his temper and grabbed the American and threw him over a woodpile ten feet high and twelve feet wide. Another time he shook hands with a tormentor until the man's fingers started to bleed.
There are contradictory accounts of the anchor incident which may have taken place in New York or New Orleans, which is natural as many anecdotes about McAskill were collected by James Gillis more than forty years after the Giant's death. French sailors taunted the Giant to lift an anchor lying on the wharf {the weight of which was estimated at 2200 to 2700 pounds). He did so and walked down the wharf with it, but one of the flukes caught in his shoulder, crippling him. Almon, who talked with the Giant's younger brother John, said that Angus admitted lifting "That Anchor" but would not talk about it and that when Angus came home he was "as straight as an arrow". Mr. Almon believed that the Giant must have lifted "That Anchor" in a "Press Lift" being braced between a solid and a moveable object-but wonders how the fluke caught in his shoulder. However this did not kill him nor was it the cause of his death he died years later.
After a career demonstrating his size and strength in Europe and North America, he returned to Englishtown and purchased a grist-mill and several other real estate holdings as well as a general store. One story is that a customer wanting to buy tea would be asked by the giant, "will you take a pound or a fistful?". Since tea was expensive in those times, most would ask for a fistful, not realizing that MacAskill's fist would easily hold more than a single pound of tea. It was on a trip to the colonial capital at Halifax to buy stock for his store that he fell ill and died August 8, 1863. He is buried alongside his parents, who were of normal proportions, in the Englishtown Cemetery; the size of MacAskill's burial mound dwarfs those of his mother and father.[5]
Big Angus McAskill was planning to go to Halifax to sell the produce he had collected and to buy the stock he needed for the winter season from the wholesalers in the capital city. Suddenly he became seriously ill, and his family moved him back to his parents' home, where his old bed was hastily lengthened and put up in the living room. The doctor's diagnosis was brain fever. After a week's illness, the Cape Breton Giant died peacefully in his sleep on August 8, 1863, the Rev. Abraham McIntosh, the Presbyterian minister, being in attendance and many neighbours in the house. The Halifax Acadian Recorder of August 15, 1863 reported that "the well-known giant ... was by far the tallest man in Nova Scotia, perhaps in British America" and that "his mild and gentle manner endeared him to all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance". The whole county mourned. MacAskill's presence lived on in Englishtown where his timber-frame house sat on the edge of Kelly's Mountain, overlooking St. Ann's Harbour. The structure, with its massive door frames still stood, albeit in ruins, as late as the 1950s and the foundation was visible into the 1980s.
The province of Nova Scotia replaced the family's grave marker with a new one after the original had fallen into disrepair around 1900. Some of MacAskill's original personal effects from his house, including a bed frame, clothes and chair were removed for preservation and displayed for many years at the nearby Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts. These artifacts were moved back to Englishtown after the "Giant MacAskill Museum" was established in the late 1980s on a road-front portion of MacAskill's former property by the "Giant MacAskill Heirs Association". In addition to the collection from the Gaelic College, the Englishtown museum also houses a more expanded collection of artifacts that had been previously maintained by family members.
The "Giant Angus MacAskill Museum" was also established in 1989 at Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye and is operated by a community group; this museum having several replicated artifacts from the Englishtown museum.
In 1977, the provincial government's new cable ferry running across the 700 foot wide entrance to St. Ann's Harbour between Englishtown and Jersey Cove was christened as the Angus MacAskill. Despite the relatively short crossing, it is the busiest ferry service in Nova Scotia, carrying hundreds of thousands of vacationers and residents every year. There are many other very interesting stories about Angus MacAskill and his stories of amazing strength and size at External Links.
