Jowett Anvil

One of the most famous iron game implements in the world, this 172-pound anvil belonged to George F. Jowett, who claimed to have been able to grip its “horn” with one hand, clean it to the shoulder by flipping it at the tip of the pull and catching it in his hand, and then press it to arm’s length. Strength historians and people with a thorough knowledge of unusual feats of strength almost universally believe that Jowett’s claim is false. For one thing, very few men are able to even budge it from the ground with one hand, much less clean it. Even so, two photos of Jowett and the anvil—one showing him supposedly pulling it past his thigh and the other showing him holding the anvil at his shoulder with one hand—were published so many times in so many magazines and books that some people came to believe that a short man with hands of average length could do something which the giants of hand-strength today—like Mark Henry and Rich Williams, men with the very strongest hands in the world