21. Honest Abe Was a Hall of Fame Wrestler
The Great Emancipator was also a great wrestler. With his craggy features, lanky frame, and stovepipe hat, Abraham Lincoln is perhaps America’s most recognizable historic president, well known for many things. He successfully navigated America through the Civil War, freed the slaves, and authored the Gettysburg Address, recited by schoolchildren to this day. Less known is that in his youth, Lincoln was a lean, mean, wrestling machine, who performed feats of strength that became part of local legend and frontier lore. Out on the frontier back in those days, wrestling was more along the lines of unarmed combat than sport, and Lincoln, 6 foot 4 and ripped, was a natural. His skills often came in handy. At age nineteen, for example, he saved his stepbrother’s river barge from river pirates by overpowering and throwing them overboard.
His most famous fight took place shortly after Lincoln, in his early twenties, moved to Salem, Illinois, and was challenged by a local bully named Jack Armstrong. The bout was inconclusive for some time. Then Armstrong resorted to dirty tricks. An enraged Lincoln grabbed him by the neck, and extending his arms, “shook him like a rag doll“, then tossed him to the ground. Standing over his rival, Lincoln then challenged Armstrong’s followers: “I’m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come and whet your horns!” Armstrong admitted he’d been fairly beaten, and proclaimed Lincoln “the best feller that ever broke into this settlement“. The duo shook hands, and became friends. Lincoln reportedly wrestled more than 300 times in his youth, and lost only once. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
