I don’t know how to break this to you, but professional wrestling is fake. That said, William “Haystack” Calhoun was as close to the real thing as you could get.

Haystack Calhoun was born in McKinney, Texas and by the time the hulking youth reached his 20s, he tipped the scales at 450 pounds and stood at over six feet tall. A promoter convinced the young Haystack to consider a career in professional wrestling. He hit the wrestling circuits with a back-story that mirrored his own humble upbringing. He entered the wrestling ring in bib overalls and a lucky full-size horseshoe suspended from a thick chain around his neck. He sported wild hair and an unkempt beard and, of course, he was barefoot. Haystack was introduced as hailing from the more rural-sounding Morgan Corner’s, Arkansas, but everything else about the massive country boy was authentic. (Although his weight was given as “601 pounds,” it actually fluctuated between 450 and 500 pounds.)

He was an instant crowd favorite, most likely due to the popularity of professional wrestling among the working-class, rural areas of the country. He became nationally known and even appeared opposite Anthony Quinn and Jackie Gleason in a television production of Rod Serling‘s wrestling-themed Requiem for a Heavyweight.  He performed feats of strength on Art Linkletter’s House Party  program,  hoisting huge bales of hay over his head to the delight of the audience.

Despite his considerable size, Haystack was fairly agile in the ring. And he displayed some knowledge of actual wrestling moves. In 1973, he teamed up with Australian Tony Garea to take the Tag Team Championship belt from the notorious Professor Toru Tanaka and Mr. Fuji. (Tanaka was the stage name of Charles Kalani, Jr., a wrestler, boxer and actor who appeared in over two dozen films and television shows, including The Running Man  and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure .)

Over twenty years in the ring finally took its toll on Haystack and he was forced to retire. He was confined to a double-wide trailer after he lost a leg to diabetes. He eventually succumbed to the disease in December 1989 at the young age of 55.

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Stanisława Walasiewicz was born in Poland in 1911 and emigrated to the United States with her family when she was three months old. After settling in Cleveland, her parents, “Americanized” the family name to Walsh and began calling their daughter Stella.

At 16, Stella began competing in running events and soon qualified for the Olympics. Stella, however, was not an American citizen and could not apply for citizenship until she turned 21. So, Stella represented her native Poland in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She won five gold medals: in running for 60, 100, 200 and 400 meters, as well as the long jump. She was voted the most popular athlete by Polish sports magazine Sports Review Daily.

An injury kept Stella from participating in the Polish Skating Championships. But, after rehab and constant training, she returned to the Championships of Warsaw games and captured nine gold medals. In 1936, she went to the Olympics in Berlin and took home the silver medal in a failed attempt at defending her world record in the 100 meter run.

In 1947, she married boxer Neil Olson and, after one more track and field title in 1951, Stella retired at the age of 40.

In 1980, 69 year-old Stella was doing some shopping in a Cleveland shopping center. In the center’s parking lot, she was shot and killed by two men who had just committed an armed robbery. A subsequent autopsy revealed that Stella was a man. While she displayed few female characteristics, Stella possessed male genitalia. Details of further testing showed that she had both XX and XY chromosomes. Her birth records, however, state that she was female and she lived her entire life as a woman.

Stella’s case is often regarded as one of the reasons why the International Olympic Committee has gradually dropped gender determination tests. Such requirements were dropped prior to the 2000 Summer Olympics, as it was decided that genetic gender is not necessarily equal to social or biological gender.

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The son of Polish immigrants, Alan J. Pakula had no intentions of taking over the family printing business. Instead, the Yale graduate with higher aspirations, headed to Hollywood. He became the assistant to the head of Warner Brothers cartoon department, but he was still not satisfied.

In 1950, Alan moved on to MGM Studios as an assistant producer. Seven years later, he produced his first film Fear Strikes Out,  the tense biopic of troubled baseball player Jimmy Piersall. In 1962, he teamed up with director Robert Mulligan to produce the classic  To Kill a Mockingbird.

After several more successes as producer, including Love with the Proper Stranger  and Inside Daisy Clover,  Alan tried his hand at directing. He was behind the camera for 1969’s The Sterile Cuckoo  starring a quirky Liza Minnelli in her first Oscar-nominated role. He went on to direct seven more actors to Oscar nominations — Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, Richard Farnsworth, Jill Clayburgh, Candice Bergen and Meryl Streep — with Fonda, Robards and Streep taking home the coveted statue. He, himself, was nominated three times for an Academy Award.

In addition to producing and directing, Alan was a respected screenwriter, penning screen treatments for Sophie’s Choice  and The Pelican Brief.

In November 1998, Alan was driving on the Long Island Expressway when the car in front of him kicked up a metal pipe that was laying on the roadway. The pipe flew through the air and crashed through Alan’s car windshield, striking him in the head. He was killed instantly, sending his vehicle swerving off the road and into a retaining fence. He had just completed filming an alternate ending for what would be his last film, The Devil’s Own.  Alan was 70 years old.

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