As a boy, Angelo Charles Siciliano was pale and thin — the “97-Pound Weakling” he would later describe himself to be in his advertising. He was often picked on by the bigger kids in grade school.

One day, while lying on the beach at Coney Island in New York with his girlfriend, a bully walked up and kicked sand in his face. His girlfriend walked away, never to be seen again.

That incident was what compelled Angelo to find a way to build up his thin body fast in the privacy of his room at home. (Rumor has it that he observed tigers at the zoo flexing their muscular bodies against the cage bars, keeping themselves strong with the resistance it created.)

To make a long story short, Angelo Charles Siciliano developed his own system based on these observations, called it “Dynamic Tension” and changed his name to Charles Atlas.

Charles Atlas’s advertising trademark, “The World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man”, became one of the most successful and enduring mail order businesses of all time. <<