A few Bruce Lee "Did you knows"

I've been an avid Bruce Lee fan since I was a kid growing up in the back hills of Jamaica. But "fan" really just extended to watching all of his movies, not really digging into his life. But while reading the Wikipedia article on Ip Man (popularized Wing Chun) the other day, I of course stumbled on references to Bruce Lee, who is by far Ip Man's most famous student. So from that I of course started reading some background on Bruce, and came across lots of interesting info. For example;

- Bruce Lee died from an allergic reaction to Equagesic (a painkiller) that his friend gave him. Some go so far as to speculate that it may be the combination of marijuana leaves that he liked to chew, combined with the compounds in Equagesic that led to his death.

- Bruce had 2 children. Brandon Lee, who died on the movie set of The Crow due to a Darwin worthy (if it had happened to the moron who messed up) gunshot wound from a "blank". Bruce also had a daughter, Shannon. She also went into acting.

- He had a prolific movie career, with over 30 movie credits to his name (from infancy to adulthood), and also appeared in over a dozen tv shows.

- He was far ahead of the times in his control of his nutrition (cause of death notwithstanding), avoiding processed foods, and focusing on fruits, vegetables, certain nutritional supplements, and smaller, more frequent meals.

- Fitness:

• Bruce could single arm curl 3 x 8 rep sets of 75 lbs! That's amazing for just about anyone, but especially so for a guy that weighed in at 140lbs soaking wet.
• Lee's striking speed from three feet with his hands down by his side reached five hundredths of a second.[79]
• Lee could take in one arm a 75 lb barbell from a standing position with the barbell held flush against his chest and slowly stick his arms out locking them, holding the barbell there for several seconds.[80]
• In a speed demonstration, Lee could snatch a dime off a person's open palm before they could close it, and leave a penny behind.[81]
• Lee performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger.[78][82]
• Lee performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups.[83]
• Lee could cause a 300-lb (136.08 kg) bag to fly towards and thump the ceiling with a sidekick.[78]
• Also, according to the Intercepting Fist DVD, Lee would hold an elevated v-sit position for 30 minutes or longer.[77]

One of my favourite quotes of his, central to his Jeet Kune Do philosophy, is "Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it".

He left an amazing martial arts legacy, as well as a great philosophy on life, reminding his students to "be yourself". Easy to say, sometimes hard to do.