Niilo Kalervo Kallio started playing with puukoilla (Finnish for knives) while he was still in short pants. "What old men can whittle I could whittle before I was ten," he says. "I loved my puukko so much that when I went to bed I'd put it under my pillow and pray I would some day have the sharpest knife in the world."
During Finland's gallant, hopeless "winter war" of 1939-40, Kallio traded his knife for a bayonet, went after the Russian invaders as a private. His father, Kyösti Kallio, was President of Finland.
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