Talk:Angus MacAskill
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[edit] Article
Nice article, Cape Breton link goes to a disambiguation page, I don't know about this so I havn't fixed it. Alf 14:31, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Cause of Death
This article seems to leave out the cause of death. Based on various sources, MacAskill apparently was at the Halifax pier and was demonstrating his anchor lifting abilities when his grip slipped and he was injured by the almost 3000lbs anchor - some sources say pinned beneath. In any event, he died from his injuries not long afterward. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.107.50.100 (talk • contribs) 08:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Lifting the anchor never killed Angus Giant Macaskill. He died many years after lifting the anchor at his parents home in Englishtown. The doctor said cause of death was brain fever and he died in his sleep.Cashisclay 17:06, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Angus Macaskill "The Cape Breton Giant"
The 1981 Guinness Book of World Records lists Angus as the tallest natural giant who ever lived, the strongest man who ever lived, and the man having the largest chest measurements of any non-obese man.Cape Breton's Big Boy jogged down the street with a 300-pound barrel of pork under each arm to the admiring whistles of bystanders. To win a bet with some French sailors he lifted an anchor weighing 2700 pounds to his shoulder and walked down the wharf with it. When Big Angus was about fourteen he went on a fishing boat to North Sydney, and the crew took him along to a dance. The Big Boy had gone ashore without shoes and in old clothes and was sitting near the door watching because dancing was frowned upon by the strict Presbyterian elders of St. Ann's. One of the dancers was a young man from town who danced over with his pretty lassie and stepped on Angus' bare toe. The big, red-faced boy quickly pulled his feet out of the way but bystanders laughed. Angus became absorbed in the dancing and unconsciously put his feet out again. The dandy stepped on the boy's toe again. For a moment it looked as if there would be a fight for the fishermen who had brought Angus along would have joined in. Angus turned red and clenched his fists but remained seated while the bully laughed. The third time his heel came down, the Big Boy jumped up and his fist swept up to his tormentor's jaw. That gentleman landed in the middle of the floor- and was unconscious for so long they thought he was dead. When the captain returned to his schooner he found Angus on his knees praying that he had not killed the man. The fishermen of St. Ann's envied Big Angus' strength. While they laboriously bailed their boats, Gille Mor set his weight under his half ton boat, tipped it on its beam ends and out spilled the bilge water! Singlehanded, he set a forty-foot mast into a schooner as easily as a farmer set a fence post in a hole.
John A. Morrison of South Gut of St. Ann's, told James Gillis that one evening at twilight when he was returning from his nets Angus called to the fishermen on the shore to help him pull his heavy boat up the steep slipway. The men thought they would play a trick on the Giant and carry it right up over the hill into a pool. At high water mark Angus said: " That will do, thank you, " but the crowd pretended not to hear and kept on. Big Angus grabbed the boat - which was pulled to pieces.
A visitor to the neighbourhood, a captain who had come on one of the American fishing vessels which came to St. Ann's to buy bait, challenged Angus to a wrestling match. St. Ann's Big Boy refused. When the three hundred pound visitor taunted him, the Cape Bretoner lost his temper and grabbed the American and threw him over a woodpile ten feet high and twelve feet wide! Another time he shook hands with a tormentor until the man's fingers started to bleed.
There are contradictory accounts of the anchor incident which may have taken place in New York or New Orleans, which is natural as many anecdotes about McAskill were collected by James Gillis more than forty years after the Giant's death. French sailors taunted the Giant to lift an anchor lying on the wharf {the weight of which was estimated at 2200 to 2700 pounds). He did so, but one of the flukes caught in his shoulder, crippling him. Almon, who talked with the Giant's younger brother John, said that Angus admitted lifting "That Anchor" but would not talk about it and that when Angus came home he was "as straight as an arrow". Mr. Almon believed that the Giant must have lifted "That Anchor" in a "Press Lift" being braced between a solid and a moveable object-but wonders how the fluke caught in his shoulder. However this did not kill him nor was it the cause of his death he died years later.
Big Angus McAskill was planning to go to Halifax to sell the produce he had collected and to buy the stock he needed for the winter season from the wholesalers in the capital city. Suddenly he became seriously ill, and his family moved him back to his parents' home, where his old bed was hastily lengthened and put up in the living room. The doctor's diagnosis was brain fever. After a week's illness, the Cape Breton Giant died peacefully in his sleep on August 8, 1863, the Rev. Abraham McIntosh, the Presbyterian minister, being in attendance and many neighbours in the house. The Halifax Acadian Recorder of August 15, 1863 reported that "the well-known giant ... was by far the tallest man in Nova Scotia, perhaps in British America" and that "his mild and gentle manner endeared him to all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance". The whole county mourned.http://www.macaskill.com/GeneralTallTales/Angus/angus.htmlCashisclay 04:13, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Clean Up
This article is very interesting and whatnot, but it doesn't read like an encyclopedia article. Rather than giving brief descriptions of stories about Big Angus, it gives rather detailed ones. If the stories are cited there really isn't a need for so much detail, people can go to the links provided to learn more. But like I said, I find this article very entertaining, it's just not an encyclopedia article and it needs far more work than I am willing to put into it. --DavidFuzznut 14:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Angus in the Antipodes
The statement that he went by fishing boat to North Sydney is very odd. It implies that North Sydney was the ultimate destination of a very long trip to the other side of the world. North Sydney is a suburb of Sydney, and previous to the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, not as populous as it is now. If included, the anecdote (not "antidote" as some silly has written) should be modified to say that he had gone to Sydney on a fishing boat and that in North Sydney etc etc. --Amandajm 13:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The article is reffering to North Sydney , Nova Scotia and Sydney Nova Scotia not Australia. Sydney is located in Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.13.80.150 (talk) 01:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
