30 October: Charles Atlas/Bodybuilder's Day

Bodybuilders day is celebrated on the birthday of Charles Atlas, the Italian-American bodybuilder best remembered as the developer of a bodybuilding method which spawned a landmark advertising campaign featuring his name and likeness. 10 things you might not know about the man behind the ads.

1. His real name was Angelo Siciliano. He later changed his name to Charles Atlas because it sounded more American.
2. He was born in Acri, Calabria, Italy. His family moved to America when he was 11.
3. He wasn't always big and strong looking. As a teenager he was skinny, weighing just 97 pounds (44 kg). In fact, he claimed the story of the 97 pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face in the advert was autobiographical.
4. At the time, of course, he couldn't, as the protagonist in that story did, go home and buy a Charles Atlas fitness programme. He couldn't afford to join the gym at the YMCA so he'd watch other men exercising and do the exercises at home. He also asked the strongmen at Coney Island what their regimes were, and read as much as he could about diet and fitness.
5. He claimed the weight training didn't really work for him. One day he visited a zoo and watched a Lion stretching. Realising this animal was big and powerful without going to a gym and lifting weights, he knew there must be another way. He found that isometric and isotonic exercises worked much better for him.
6. He now had the right kind of body to make a career out of bodybuilding. He won a "World's Most Beautiful Man" contest in 1921 and posed as a model for sculptors. Alexander Stirling Calder's Washington at Peace on the Washington Square Arch in Manhattan; Pietro Montana's Dawn of Glory in Highland Park, Brooklyn and James Earle Frazer's Alexander Hamilton at the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington DC are all based on the body of Charles Atlas.
7. It was when he teamed up with advertising guru Charles Roman in the 1920s that his regimen really took off and he became a household name. Roman coined the term "Dynamic-Tension" for the technique and came up with the comic book style advert designed to appeal to adolescent boys reading comic books. It has been described as one of the longest-lasting and most memorable ad campaigns of all time.
8. By the 1950s, the Dynamic-Tension regimen had been translated into seven languages and sold to nearly 1 million customers worldwide.
9. Charles Atlas died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1972. He was 80 years old.
10. Both Charles Atlas and "Dynamic-Tension" are mentioned in the Rocky Horror Picture Show number Charles Atlas Song / I Can Make You a Man. It refers to a 98-pound weakling, who will get sand in his face when kicked to the ground. Dr. Frank N. Furter goes on to say that his creation "carries the Charles Atlas Seal of Approval."

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