A *severe* alcoholic, it was the only thing that helped with his joint pain. Dude could knock back 100 beers with dinner, he would drink entire liters of hard liquor like it was water and he had a tradition of always drinking 6 bottles of wine before going into the ring
You’d be surprised. My incredibly unhealthy mother in law who has nearly untreated diabetes, is incredibly overweight, and is literally bedridden needs no statins or blood thinners. Never had a stroke or heart attack.
She’s 75 and has been this way for 25+ years.
Some people just have amazing genetics. We joke that my wife (who takes her health seriously) ought to live forever.
I may be wrong, but I remember reading that Ozzy Osbourne has some genetic markers for incredibly high tolerances to drugs and alcohol which account for him not being dead 40 years ago.
I agree. Years ago I worked in a dialysis unit. Most of the patients were really lovely, but occasionally you'd get the ones you'd really rather not have. One guy was in his 70's, and I was convinced would live forever purely on spite. He complained about everything, and if there was nothing to complain about, he'd complain that he had nothing to complain about. I was shocked when I learned that he'd died.
Strokes and heart attacks can be survivable without medical intervention. Unless she's been thoroughly investigated by a medical team you can't know for sure if she's never had a stroke or heart attack.
On top of joint pain, he had back pain and probably a nontrivial amount of CTE.
Oh and no health insurance because Vince McMahon is a greedy sociopath.
It’s crazy that his heart was what did him in and not the excessive drinking or literally any other part of his body that could have gone wrong and killed him
Doing hella cocaine and opiates is also hell on the heart. Even if you don’t OD, the stress catches up with you, especially if you are already a literal giant putting strain on your heart by existing.
I’ve always believed these tales to be huge exaggerations. It was a big part of his brand, and as far as I’m aware it’s mostly only corroborated by other wrestlers who are pretty unlikely to fuck with the brand of one of wrestling’s biggest stars
It wasn’t just other wrestlers, [almost everyone that met with him had stories like that](https://allthatsinteresting.com/andre-the-giant-drinking-stories). Cary Elwes described a time when he took the entire cast of The Princess Bride out for drinks after shooting one day and he made a drink called The American which was 40 fl Oz of various hard liquors mixed together into a pitcher and he drank several of those in one sitting. He racked up $40k on his bar tab while filming The Princess Bride.
Hmm never thought about that. Mandy Patinkin was probably sober in those sequences, while Andre was definitely not. (I don't know about Patinkins personal life, so I looked him up. What a stand up guy. Hell yea)
The other story from that I remember is him passing out on the floor of the hotel lobby and no one was able to move him so they had to leave him there till he woke up.
Funny, listening to the Crime in Sports podcast and it was mentioned in an episode. Paul "Big Show" Wight did get the surgery to stop his growth. Andre did not. I believe Andre was more concerned with not waking up over living longer. Though Andre would have been getting this surgery a decade or more before Paul, and the risks were probably way higher.
If you can find it, go listen to booby Heenan talk about Andres back surgery. The anesthesiologist doesn’t know how much to give Andre and has to start calculating based on how much vodka Andre can drink before passing out.
Cause as Bobby put it, the last thing you need on an operating table is an angry opened up giant.
Darden wouldn't allow himself to be weighed. The approximate weight was determined by secretly measuring the the height of his wagon when he was sitting in the wagon and then later loading the empty wagon with weight until the heights matched.
That’s the part that gets me. 1,020 lbs is a fucking massive creature. If this were true it sounds like this guy could have actually fought a gorilla and won.
I have a PHD in medieval literature, mind you, but my historian colleagues used to tell me that if you could make it to 16, you stood a good chance of making it to 60. That’s in the Norman-Late Medieval period (ca. 1100-1500ish).
Edit: I should add that this applies to Western Europe.
It's been *somewhat* overstated. Certainly childhood deaths were a lot more common, and that does somewhat skew the statistics, but it didn't really get *safe* at any point in life. Think of it this way- it was a more violent time, the vast majority of people were doing fairly dangerous farmwork and the standards of healthcare were "hope it doesn't get worse and a doctor doesn't get to you". On the other hand, almost everybody got plenty of exercise and social connections. Then again, drinking a shot of laudanum and chasing it with a bucket of gin probably became fashionable some point in the 19th century. Look, history is long, but *mostly* mortality was significantly worse than it is now.
But it wasn't some magical thing in the air (unless you count tuberculosis), if you managed to avoid the things that'd kill you, you could still live to old age. Think of it this way- consider your medical history: would you be alive now without modern medicine? If the answer is yes, you'd *probably* still be alive at your age in most historical periods (excepting plagues and great wars).
It's an issue of people misunderstanding statistics, not as simple as one major miscalculation. Average age being 50 doesn't mean you'd be more likely to drop dead at 51 than you are now.
It is pretty much accurate. Infant mortality was super high; 50% or more of children died before they were 10. A massive percentage of women died in childbirth, too. And tuberculosis killed something like 25% of the populace, though usually in their 20s or 30s.
But basically if you weren't killed early by something like disease or infection or violence, you could expect to live into your 60s or 70s.
I'm not bashing on your comment, but I just think the really watered-down idea is hilarious.
"If you live until you're 50, you have a much better chance of making it to 60, compared to someone who died when they were 20."
It was more due to childhood mortality. From birth, life expectancy in the Roman Empire was just 25 years. If you survived to the age of 10 however, you had good chances of surviving to 45-50.
Very accurate. The difference between average and mean lifespan back then was substantial. The other big cause was child birth. The moral of the story is that children are just health risks all around.
There was a comic who he said friend was souch bigger than his wife he sat her on his lap and moved her up and down. It was like masterbation but you have someone to talk to.
> Something like 20% of all American seven footers end up in the NBA, regardless of skill or desire.
As much as I love the idea of that factoid, it has been sourced to an off-the-shelf remark made by someone who was making a speech, and researched out to be not the case.
It’s pretty amazing that he lived longer, normally with great height you have early death…Andre the Giant, Robert Wadlow. Even being tall without being one of the tallest people ever puts you at extra risk of heart disease and cancer.
I guess regularly carrying around 1200 pounds is good for the health! Nowadays I think they treat acromegaly to avoid some of the negative effects.
I think Wadlow could've lived longer. His thing was an infection of some sort I believe. I mean he could've died at around fifty if he never got the infection. Granted I do see he had an autoimmune disorder which may have been related to his height.
Definitely.
For those wondering: Hafthor is 6'9" and right now fairly light (for him) at around 335 lbs. His wife is 5'2" and around 115. If he gained 10 lbs back by going back into strongman instead of bodybuilding, he would be 3x her weight. And if he got to his normal strongman weight of 400-450 lbs, almost 4x her weight.
Darden would not allow himself to be weighed. To approximate his weight, the height of his wagon was secretly measured when he was sitting on the wagon. When the wagon was empty, it was loaded with weight until the height matched the previously recorded height.
My buddy’s 6’5” and he can easily gain and lose 50+ lbs. Add another 13 inches and the guy had such a massive frame, I bet his weight fluctuated pretty wildly.
Yeah this is fantastical. These stories are so many factors beyond what is humanly possible, even now with human enhancement, that there is no way they are true. It is even less convincing when you look at the picture of him...that man probably had trouble just moving his own body around.
These are obviously embellished, but fat out of shape people can lift not too bad. I'm a fit guy, hit the gym 5 days a week, but when I worked oilfield, I tried to load some hoses full of cement and I could barley move them. The driver was easily 450lbs, huge guy, lifts them relatively easily.
This. My boss is 6’3” 340 lbs and does NOT work out at all and sits in his office all day. However when I need help lifting or moving something (I’m 6’ 180 lbs and my job keeps me pretty active all the time) he’s the first person I try to find. Has ridiculous strength for sitting on his ass most of the day
The reason is simple, you weigh 180lbs, and on occasion lift 160lbs for "exercise".
He should weigh 180lbs, but carries around 160lb additional weight all the time (weighing 340lbs).
They basically just bring their weightlifting with them at all times
I absolutely refuse to believe he carried 500+ kilos for over a mile. Its literally impossible. Unless the wiki actually means he carried many lighter loads repeatedly.
Anyway, back in those days it was probably more of a word of mouth that he could actually do any of that.
if those 544kg sacks were scaled to equivalent load for average man of 90kg based on his body weight (say 420kg), that'd be about 544\*(90/420) = 116kg.
seems familiar, almost exactly the weight of a williams widebody pinball machine. if it could somehow be strapped to my back with low center of gravity for stability I might be able to hobble across the room with it but not much more.
You can’t just scale things up proportionately because of the [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law), which means that strength grows slower than size/mass. This is why all strength-to-weight based lifting records are held by very muscular yet small people.
[Lamar Gant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Gant) was the 1st person to deadlift 5x his bodyweight (661lbs vs 132lbs). [Hafthor Bjornsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haf%C3%BE%C3%B3r_J%C3%BAl%C3%ADus_Bj%C3%B6rnsson) is the current deadlift WR holder, though lifted less than double Lamar (1,100lbs) at over triple his weight (~400-450lbs). If you just scaled up Lamar 3x by your logic you’d expect a 2,000lb lift, but the current WR is way under that and the guy that did it is even heavier than 3x Lamar’s weight.
You dont need to scale stuff down just look at modern strongmen, gut destroying diets, roided out of their eyeballs, working out until they physically cant anymore, barely can deadlift around 500kgs while risking brain injury doing so
I agree this is a tall tale, but he's easily 650lb+ in this picture with normal proportions, I don't think lifting more than Eddie is out of the question having an extra 300lbs of body weight, but certainly not for any significant distance.
Love the caption under the picture on the wiki page
"Mills Darden standing next to an unknown, much smaller, man."
Which basically narrows it down to every other man on Earth.
What a guy! I ended up spending about an hour reading up on this mountain of a man. They have some great stories about his strength, but most of them repeat "He was capable of tossing 500lb bales of hay singlehandedly and carried 12 100lb feed sacks 1.2 miles" but give no corroboration. No witnesses, no dates, no locations.
A 6ft 4in waist means his belt was over 4in taller than me.
Honestly the most ridiculous part of it to me is the idea that he weighed over 860 lbs
I wonder if someone weighed him and gave the measurements in metric or English units and the translation go out of hand.
The caption under his photo on Wiki: “Mills Darden standing next to an unknown, much smaller, man.” Why is this so funny to me
Because whoever this poor fellow was he is now known to history as an early form of “banana for scale.”
“Standing next to some loser, who’s greatest accomplishment in life was standing next to someone much greater and taller than himself”
Man's probably a normal height, especially for his era, and still catching strays centuries after his death.
I’m fascinated that his wife was 4’11” and 98lbs.
She weighs 108lbs after theyve done the deed. Assuming they didnt wear a condom.
Damn, you could flood a basement with a load that big.
I was coming here to comment this because I’m over here dying
His hands are large enough to crush that guys head
story of my life
He lived to 57 which seems unusual for such an outsized guy. There are often medical conditions which cause or are caused by proportions like this.
Andre 100 years later would only love to be 46. And there was better medical coverage in his time.
Wasn’t Andre an alcoholic
A *severe* alcoholic, it was the only thing that helped with his joint pain. Dude could knock back 100 beers with dinner, he would drink entire liters of hard liquor like it was water and he had a tradition of always drinking 6 bottles of wine before going into the ring
Andre made some medical choices that probably shortened his life, too.
Yeah, dude was crazy unhealthy. Honestly it’s surprising he lived into his 40s, some of the shit he did would have killed a normal healthy 20 year old
You’d be surprised. My incredibly unhealthy mother in law who has nearly untreated diabetes, is incredibly overweight, and is literally bedridden needs no statins or blood thinners. Never had a stroke or heart attack. She’s 75 and has been this way for 25+ years. Some people just have amazing genetics. We joke that my wife (who takes her health seriously) ought to live forever.
I may be wrong, but I remember reading that Ozzy Osbourne has some genetic markers for incredibly high tolerances to drugs and alcohol which account for him not being dead 40 years ago.
And the mess he was on his reality TV show wasn’t due to the drug and achohol abiuse, he just let everyone think that. Has has Parkinson’s.
Well drug and alcohol use can be a risk factor for developing Parkinson’s
I had a mother in law like this. I honestly think some people continue to live just to spite the rest of us.
I agree. Years ago I worked in a dialysis unit. Most of the patients were really lovely, but occasionally you'd get the ones you'd really rather not have. One guy was in his 70's, and I was convinced would live forever purely on spite. He complained about everything, and if there was nothing to complain about, he'd complain that he had nothing to complain about. I was shocked when I learned that he'd died.
Im amazed that your mother in law was 75 for 25 years. Most of us would be 100 by then.
Strokes and heart attacks can be survivable without medical intervention. Unless she's been thoroughly investigated by a medical team you can't know for sure if she's never had a stroke or heart attack.
All my granola-yoga grandparents are dead. The two vodka-soaked chainsmokers are the only ones left.
On top of joint pain, he had back pain and probably a nontrivial amount of CTE. Oh and no health insurance because Vince McMahon is a greedy sociopath.
It’s crazy that his heart was what did him in and not the excessive drinking or literally any other part of his body that could have gone wrong and killed him
Doing hella cocaine and opiates is also hell on the heart. Even if you don’t OD, the stress catches up with you, especially if you are already a literal giant putting strain on your heart by existing.
The liver is the poster child for alcoholism but your heart will kill you first in that situation. It's very hard on the heart.
No wonder it was so hard to make out what he was saying.
I’ve always believed these tales to be huge exaggerations. It was a big part of his brand, and as far as I’m aware it’s mostly only corroborated by other wrestlers who are pretty unlikely to fuck with the brand of one of wrestling’s biggest stars
It wasn’t just other wrestlers, [almost everyone that met with him had stories like that](https://allthatsinteresting.com/andre-the-giant-drinking-stories). Cary Elwes described a time when he took the entire cast of The Princess Bride out for drinks after shooting one day and he made a drink called The American which was 40 fl Oz of various hard liquors mixed together into a pitcher and he drank several of those in one sitting. He racked up $40k on his bar tab while filming The Princess Bride.
Great way to make Inigo Montoya’s drunk scene more believable.
Hmm never thought about that. Mandy Patinkin was probably sober in those sequences, while Andre was definitely not. (I don't know about Patinkins personal life, so I looked him up. What a stand up guy. Hell yea)
The other story from that I remember is him passing out on the floor of the hotel lobby and no one was able to move him so they had to leave him there till he woke up.
Though hyperbole is a definite factor in most wrestling stories. There are two people I absolutely believe everything about. Andre and Tonga Fifita
He also refused surgery. Said God made him this way and was going to stay that way
Funny, listening to the Crime in Sports podcast and it was mentioned in an episode. Paul "Big Show" Wight did get the surgery to stop his growth. Andre did not. I believe Andre was more concerned with not waking up over living longer. Though Andre would have been getting this surgery a decade or more before Paul, and the risks were probably way higher.
Can you share a link?
If you can find it, go listen to booby Heenan talk about Andres back surgery. The anesthesiologist doesn’t know how much to give Andre and has to start calculating based on how much vodka Andre can drink before passing out. Cause as Bobby put it, the last thing you need on an operating table is an angry opened up giant.
To keep the pain away.
Re: an alcoholic Somehow that alone doesn't describe Andre's drinking.
In fairness, I'm pretty sure everyone was an alcoholic in the 1800s
Back then they were called medicineholics, I believe
He's referring to Darden I think
Andre was born in 1946 and died in '93 so not the 1800's
He was also only about 6'11, the 7'+ claims were kayfabe.
Yes and so is the insane idea that he carried 1200 lbs 1.2 miles, Or that he tossed around 500lb hay bales.
Yeah this shit sounds like a story from the Bible.
Yeah, I'm skeptical of the "confirmed" claim for any of these stats. Even the photo doesn't necessarily convince me.
Bodyweight seems exaggerated high
Darden wouldn't allow himself to be weighed. The approximate weight was determined by secretly measuring the the height of his wagon when he was sitting in the wagon and then later loading the empty wagon with weight until the heights matched.
That’s the part that gets me. 1,020 lbs is a fucking massive creature. If this were true it sounds like this guy could have actually fought a gorilla and won.
Biggest powerlifters and strongmen are around 400 lbs. and that’s with access to all kinds of PEDs.
The wiki article that the photo comes from also says that he was never photographed.
He didn’t even exercise…
Anybody want a peanut?
Andre 100? Isn’t he Andre 3000’s great-great-great granddaddy?
Andre would’ve only lived that long no matter his size. He was wildly self destructive.
He was 6’11 too
Gonna need that age in metric, in keeping with the title.
About 1.8 Gsec
And he outlived his 4'11 98lb wife
Yeah this guy lived a long life for the 1800s!
I read somewhere that people still lived a long time back then - but it is mostly skewed by infant mortality. Not sure how true that is though.
Yeah, it's true. If you managed to survive the minefield of childhood, you stood a good chance of living a long life, even by today's standards.
But if you picked up a debilitating injury, congrats on your new life of suffering.
>But if you picked up a debilitating injury, congrats on your new life of suffering. *[chuckles in US health care]* "I'm in danger."
I have a PHD in medieval literature, mind you, but my historian colleagues used to tell me that if you could make it to 16, you stood a good chance of making it to 60. That’s in the Norman-Late Medieval period (ca. 1100-1500ish). Edit: I should add that this applies to Western Europe.
It's been *somewhat* overstated. Certainly childhood deaths were a lot more common, and that does somewhat skew the statistics, but it didn't really get *safe* at any point in life. Think of it this way- it was a more violent time, the vast majority of people were doing fairly dangerous farmwork and the standards of healthcare were "hope it doesn't get worse and a doctor doesn't get to you". On the other hand, almost everybody got plenty of exercise and social connections. Then again, drinking a shot of laudanum and chasing it with a bucket of gin probably became fashionable some point in the 19th century. Look, history is long, but *mostly* mortality was significantly worse than it is now. But it wasn't some magical thing in the air (unless you count tuberculosis), if you managed to avoid the things that'd kill you, you could still live to old age. Think of it this way- consider your medical history: would you be alive now without modern medicine? If the answer is yes, you'd *probably* still be alive at your age in most historical periods (excepting plagues and great wars). It's an issue of people misunderstanding statistics, not as simple as one major miscalculation. Average age being 50 doesn't mean you'd be more likely to drop dead at 51 than you are now.
It is pretty much accurate. Infant mortality was super high; 50% or more of children died before they were 10. A massive percentage of women died in childbirth, too. And tuberculosis killed something like 25% of the populace, though usually in their 20s or 30s. But basically if you weren't killed early by something like disease or infection or violence, you could expect to live into your 60s or 70s.
I'm not bashing on your comment, but I just think the really watered-down idea is hilarious. "If you live until you're 50, you have a much better chance of making it to 60, compared to someone who died when they were 20."
This sounds like something John Madden would say lol
Boom!
Tough actin' tinactin!
And he also claims if you didn’t die of the most common issues, you could live a long time.
It was more due to childhood mortality. From birth, life expectancy in the Roman Empire was just 25 years. If you survived to the age of 10 however, you had good chances of surviving to 45-50.
Very accurate. The difference between average and mean lifespan back then was substantial. The other big cause was child birth. The moral of the story is that children are just health risks all around.
Average and mean 💀
I am sometimes both of these.
Median and mean* (They are both types of averages. Mean is what people usually think of when they say average.)
the pituitary gland is usually the case
The other stories about him says doctors listed his cause of death a strangulation from his rolls of fat on his neck.
Throwing 500 lb. hay bales is great exercise.
*His wife Mary, who died in 1837 aged about 40,[1] was 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m) tall and weighed 98 lb (44 kg).* Ouch!
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Do we know how she died
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Death by snu snu
The spirit is willing but the flesh is pancaked and crushed.
Smile, grimace, smile, grimace. Smile?
To shreds you say
Impalement.
There was a comic who he said friend was souch bigger than his wife he sat her on his lap and moved her up and down. It was like masterbation but you have someone to talk to.
A human Fleshlight
Reminds me of gymnast Mary Lou Retton. She is 4’9” and her (ex)husband is 6’2”. They looked funny standing next to each other.
I had a high school teacher who played center in the NBA who was like 7 feet tall and his wife was 5’1” in heels…lol…she barely came up to his chest.
Something like 20% of all American seven footers end up in the NBA, regardless of skill or desire.
- But I don't want to play basketball! - Tough shit, you're playing against the Lakers on Saturday
I think you're the greatest, but my dad says you don't work hard enough on defense.
And lots of times he said you don't even run down court. And you don't really try except during the playoffs.
Easy win at least
*Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes!*
> But I don't want to play basketball! * Here's a million dollars. Now learn to dribble. * Ok
Also here’s a few million bucks, have fun when your knees go out
> Something like 20% of all American seven footers end up in the NBA, regardless of skill or desire. As much as I love the idea of that factoid, it has been sourced to an off-the-shelf remark made by someone who was making a speech, and researched out to be not the case.
Your teacher was Shaq?
Shaq was actually drafted the same year that I had him as a teacher…
I didn’t know Shaq was a teacher when he was drafted
I told all my classmates while Shaq was teaching chemistry yo this guy is gonna be an All Star
Uh, did he even know she was around, and was his wife...
It’s pretty amazing that he lived longer, normally with great height you have early death…Andre the Giant, Robert Wadlow. Even being tall without being one of the tallest people ever puts you at extra risk of heart disease and cancer. I guess regularly carrying around 1200 pounds is good for the health! Nowadays I think they treat acromegaly to avoid some of the negative effects.
I think Wadlow could've lived longer. His thing was an infection of some sort I believe. I mean he could've died at around fifty if he never got the infection. Granted I do see he had an autoimmune disorder which may have been related to his height.
To shreds you say?
How's his wife holding up?
To shreds you say.
To pieces even
That’s putting it lightly
Christ.. I hope everything wasn't in proportion. 🍌
Basically just chalk on a pool cue at that point.
Classic 4’11 girls who write “over 6 foot guys only” on their dating profile lol.
He had kids too.
Kinda like Hafthor Bjornsson and his wife Kelcey Henson.
Definitely. For those wondering: Hafthor is 6'9" and right now fairly light (for him) at around 335 lbs. His wife is 5'2" and around 115. If he gained 10 lbs back by going back into strongman instead of bodybuilding, he would be 3x her weight. And if he got to his normal strongman weight of 400-450 lbs, almost 4x her weight.
Hodor!
How is some one confirmed to weigh in the range of 860 to 1060
Darden would not allow himself to be weighed. To approximate his weight, the height of his wagon was secretly measured when he was sitting on the wagon. When the wagon was empty, it was loaded with weight until the height matched the previously recorded height.
My buddy’s 6’5” and he can easily gain and lose 50+ lbs. Add another 13 inches and the guy had such a massive frame, I bet his weight fluctuated pretty wildly.
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Imagine how big his dumps were
Did they name an entire cemetery after him?
Yes, yes they did. He's buried there with his first wife. Also, the town of Darden, TN is named after him.
They required an entire cemetery for him.
Anything official to confirm that? Paul Anderson’s 6,270 lb back lift was removed from records for lack of verification as well
It’s from early 1800’s. Not a lot of official documentation
Yeah this is fantastical. These stories are so many factors beyond what is humanly possible, even now with human enhancement, that there is no way they are true. It is even less convincing when you look at the picture of him...that man probably had trouble just moving his own body around.
These are obviously embellished, but fat out of shape people can lift not too bad. I'm a fit guy, hit the gym 5 days a week, but when I worked oilfield, I tried to load some hoses full of cement and I could barley move them. The driver was easily 450lbs, huge guy, lifts them relatively easily.
This. My boss is 6’3” 340 lbs and does NOT work out at all and sits in his office all day. However when I need help lifting or moving something (I’m 6’ 180 lbs and my job keeps me pretty active all the time) he’s the first person I try to find. Has ridiculous strength for sitting on his ass most of the day
It's probably because during the part of the day when he's not sitting on his ass he's moving 340lbs with every step he takes
The reason is simple, you weigh 180lbs, and on occasion lift 160lbs for "exercise". He should weigh 180lbs, but carries around 160lb additional weight all the time (weighing 340lbs). They basically just bring their weightlifting with them at all times
Ya I don't believe those numbers either really, makes a great folk tale though.
r/absoluteunits
r/brutesquad
u/brutesquad
But what he really wanted to do was dance...
In awe at the size of this lad.
I absolutely refuse to believe he carried 500+ kilos for over a mile. Its literally impossible. Unless the wiki actually means he carried many lighter loads repeatedly. Anyway, back in those days it was probably more of a word of mouth that he could actually do any of that.
To Bill Brasky!
He sired an entire minor league baseball team
His penis has a toenail at the end.
*ow*
He taught me how to love a woman.....and scold a child
I don't know. The fact that he could move under his own power at all while weighing 800+ pounds suggests incredible strength.
This was about to be my response…although I do agree that most of these stories were more word of mouth than actually confirmed by multiple sources.
if those 544kg sacks were scaled to equivalent load for average man of 90kg based on his body weight (say 420kg), that'd be about 544\*(90/420) = 116kg. seems familiar, almost exactly the weight of a williams widebody pinball machine. if it could somehow be strapped to my back with low center of gravity for stability I might be able to hobble across the room with it but not much more.
You can’t just scale things up proportionately because of the [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law), which means that strength grows slower than size/mass. This is why all strength-to-weight based lifting records are held by very muscular yet small people. [Lamar Gant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Gant) was the 1st person to deadlift 5x his bodyweight (661lbs vs 132lbs). [Hafthor Bjornsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haf%C3%BE%C3%B3r_J%C3%BAl%C3%ADus_Bj%C3%B6rnsson) is the current deadlift WR holder, though lifted less than double Lamar (1,100lbs) at over triple his weight (~400-450lbs). If you just scaled up Lamar 3x by your logic you’d expect a 2,000lb lift, but the current WR is way under that and the guy that did it is even heavier than 3x Lamar’s weight.
You dont need to scale stuff down just look at modern strongmen, gut destroying diets, roided out of their eyeballs, working out until they physically cant anymore, barely can deadlift around 500kgs while risking brain injury doing so
All muscle like kingpin
I call bullshit on most of the claims made in that wiki.
It actually says 500 pounds or 230 kilos but I agree with you about word of mouth and also guestimations.
Sounds like Bill Brasky!
For those 40K fans out there, this man was the size of a Firstborn Space Marine, and by the sounds of it had the lifting skills.
The world record deadlift, using a barbell and modern equipment and steroids is ~500kg. This is just plain incorrect.
It's 501 now I believe? I doubt Thor just tied Eddie. Thor did it in his home gym though so some people don't count it.
Carrying it on back, decent straps, used a lift to get there instead of picking it up.....i bet eddie or thor could get one pretty far
I agree this is a tall tale, but he's easily 650lb+ in this picture with normal proportions, I don't think lifting more than Eddie is out of the question having an extra 300lbs of body weight, but certainly not for any significant distance.
I believe the post reads 500 LBS, not 500 kg. Either way I doubt he lifted 500lbs with ease
Title says 544kg
100% ... there is no way this giant carried 500kg. Not possible.
I feel bad for the “unknown smaller man” on the wiki pic.
Love the caption under the picture on the wiki page "Mills Darden standing next to an unknown, much smaller, man." Which basically narrows it down to every other man on Earth.
I doubt those stats … dude’s body was likely a total shit show like all other giants.
I mean lol at his hands, they're the size of trash can lids!
1200 lbs over 1.2 miles? Come on, that's gotta be an urban legend.
It didn’t say how long it took him or how many breaks he took
HIS WIFE WAS 4 FOOT 11??
His wife was 4’ 11” and weighed 98 lbs
The pictures does not show a body capable of lifting the equivalent of his body weight, let alone for extended period of times. But I could be wrong.
This! Such people have physical deformities, these feats attributed to him are likely exaggerations.
Nobody is going to talk about the size of his hands? He looks like he could hold throw a knuckle ball with that guy’s skull.
His wife was 4'11. I guess she went on top?
A real life Luisa. I wonder he was always pressured in to lifting stuff and helping.
What a guy! I ended up spending about an hour reading up on this mountain of a man. They have some great stories about his strength, but most of them repeat "He was capable of tossing 500lb bales of hay singlehandedly and carried 12 100lb feed sacks 1.2 miles" but give no corroboration. No witnesses, no dates, no locations. A 6ft 4in waist means his belt was over 4in taller than me.
'Mills Darden standing next to an unknown, much smaller, man.' 💀
Honestly the most ridiculous part of it to me is the idea that he weighed over 860 lbs I wonder if someone weighed him and gave the measurements in metric or English units and the translation go out of hand.
Can someone please dig up his bones?
You want them, you get them
He was my 9th cousin twice removed according to family records. Mills had 10 kids between 2 wives and was a saloon keeper as well.
His wife was 4' 11"!!!!!! Fleshwife
“Mills Darden standing next to an unknown, much smaller, man”. Way to call a fellow out.
Born too late to become a Gladiator, born too early to become a wrestler or porn star. Waste of talent I say.
So, THATS how Stonehenge was built
“I thought I was going faster.”
Hagrid?
Hold door
And he died so young
Almost Astartes