Statue of the World's Strongest Man
Toccoa, Georgia
Paul Anderson was born and grew up just down the street from the life-size bronze statue that now pays him tribute. In his yard he would lift old car axles, 55-gallon drums filled with concrete, and a safe that weighed almost 2,500 pounds. He would hammer nails with his thumbs.
Anderson won the super-heavyweight weightlifting gold medal in the 1956 Olympics, blowing away his foreign competitors; the Russians called him "wonder of nature." The following year he raised 6,270 pounds with his back, the greatest weight ever lifted by a human, which earned him the title, "Strongest Man in the World."
Anderson set his records decades before the arrival of steroids and human growth hormone. The statue of Anderson depicts him as he looked in his prime: not a body-builder, but an un-chiseled natural brute of a man with a droopy butt.
He died in 1994 of kidney disease; in 2008 the town of Toccoa built a park with the statue in his honor.