Ed (or Edwin, or Eddie) Kahn was a standout football player who played three years in the NFL in the 1930s for the Redskins. (We hate using that term, but that was the name at the time; in fact, his first two years were spent with the then-Boston Redskins before the move to Washington.) In 1937, Kahn's team won the NFL Championship, the first ever for the franchise. So that's all great.

Kahn was nicknamed "King Kong". Now that's just terrific!

Of course, being the inquiring minds that we are, we tried to figure out exactly how he got that nickname. It seems that Kahn acquired it during his time at the University of North Carolina, which coincided with the movie "King Kong" that came out in 1933. Was he rather hairy? (Seems so if we zoom out in this picture.) Was he huge? (5'9", 194 lbs, which seems tiny by current football standards, but was probably not back in the day.) Did his name sounds like "Kong"? (We guess?)

Kahn left football after the championship season, volunteering in the US Army at the onset of World War II. He did not return, perishing in the Philippines in early 1945.

It seems that King Kong was a great mensch. Not a sentence you hear often!