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Joseph L. Greenstein, better known as "The Mighty Atom", was a 20th century strongman.^[1]

Greenstein was born in Suvalk, Poland in 1893. As a child he suffered from respiratory ailments, and at age 14, a team of doctors predicted he would die from tuberculosis. Around that time, he became acquainted with a Russian circus strongman called "Champion Volanko", who took Greenstein under his wing. Greenstein traveled with Volanko and the Issakoff Brothers' Circus for eighteen months, learning the strongman's training regimen. After this, he returned to Poland and married his wife, Leah, and began a career as a wrestler. Due in part to rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, he then left for America.

Greenstein first went to Galveston, Texas, working as a dockworker and wrestling as "Kid Greenstein". In 1914, a local Texas man who was obsessed with Greenstein's wife shot him between the eyebrows from a distance of 30 feet. Amazingly, Greenstein left the hospital on the same day - the bullet did not enter his skull, but was flattened by the impact. This experience sparked Greenstein's interest in the mental powers associated with strength, and he gradually developed an array of strongman feats.^[2]

Despite standing only 5'4" and weighing 140 pounds, Greenstein became one of the 20th century's leading strongmen. Some of his feats of strength included:

• Driving 20 penny nails through a 2 1/2 inch board with his bare hands^[1]
• Lying on a bed of nails while supporting a 14-man Dixieland band on his chest
• Changing a tire on a car without any tools
• Breaking as many as three chains by chest expansion
• Bending an iron bar or horseshoe by holding one end with his teeth while one end of the bar was held fixed in a vise
• Bending 1/2 inch steel bars with his hands
• Biting nails in half with his teeth (he could also perform this feat with a 25-cent coin)
• Resisting the pull of an airplane with his hair.^[3] This feat was performed at the Buffalo Airport and was documented in the Buffalo Evening Times on September 29, 1928.

Greenstein continued performing his strongman feats well into his eighties, giving his last performance at his great-grandchilds first birthday on May 11, 1977 at Madison Square Garden. He was featured several times in Ripley's Believe It Or Not and in the 1976 Guinness Book of World Records. Later in life he sold coconut oil soaps and health elixirs at fairs and farmer's markets. He traveled in an old Model A truck with panels that opened to show his extensive collection of newsclippings and citations from civic leaders and organizations. NYC Mayor LaGuardia issued a proclamation thanking Greenstein for showing his skills to the NYC police department. Greenstein died on October 8, 1977. The story of his life has been told by Ed Spielman in the book The Mighty Atom.^[4]

References