Curtis Martin overcame incredible adversity to make it to the NFL (let alone college).

When Martin was a child, his father would regularly torture his mother. In his Hall of Fame Speech, Martin recalled:

When I was 5 years old, I remember watching him torture my mother, I mean, literally. I don’t necessarily have notes, so I’m going to bare my soul and just bear with me.

He had my mother locked in the bathroom. Had her sitting on the edge of the tub, and he turned on all the hot water and stopped the tub up so that the hot water would eventually flow on her legs. He dared her to move. As the hot water flowed up and started going on her legs and going on her feet and she would flinch a little bit, he would rush into the bathroom, take her hair and burn it with a lighter. He would come back out, watch her some more, she’d move again, and he would go in there with a cigarette and put cigarette burns all over her legs which she still bears to this day. I’ve seen him beat her up like she was a man. I’ve seen him throw her down the steps.

His grandmother, Eleanor Johnson was stabbed to death in her Pittsburgh home when Martin was 9 years old. Martin lived in constant fear and never believed he'd make it to 21 years old.

In High School, when Martin was walking down the block with his best friend Jamont Neal, Neal was killed by a shotgun in a driveby shooting.

But Martin's closest brush with death came when he was accosted by a criminal in the streets, who held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger seven times. No bullets discharged. On the 8th pull, a bullet fired off while pointed away from him. "I wasn't even thinking at the time that a miracle had happened, that God saved my life" Martin recalled.

Martin's survival is a miracle story, and one I thought was worth sharing as a fact of the day.

Source: ESPN

Source: NewsDay

Source: Eugene Cho

Source: NY Post