Robert Wadlow. Marc Hartzman Collection.
I owe my fascination with the odd and unusual to Robert Wadlow. As a kid growing up I used to love the first chapter of the Guinness Book of World Records, The Human Being. I’d stare in wonder at the pages featuring Wadlow. As the world’s tallest man ever, he stood 8’-11 ½” tall. He would’ve hit the 9-foot mark if it hadn’t been for a blister on his toe.
Known as the “Gentleman Giant”, Wadlow was born in Alton, Illinois on February 22, 1918, and weighed a normal nine pounds. An over-active pituitary gland soon made the rest of his life anything but normal. He quickly grew into a big baby, weighing sixty-two pounds by his sixth month. At five he was already five feet, four inches and one hundred five pounds. When Robert was nine he could carry his one-hundred-fifty-pound father around like he was a puppy. By thirteen he was easily the world’s tallest teenager at seven feet, four inches.
In 1936 Wadlow graduated and attended Shurtleff College on a scholarship. He hoped to enter the legal profession.
Instead, he began making public appearances for shoe companies in order to receive his custom-made 37AA shoes for free. Other types of companies also used him for publicity. An advertisement for a store called Gately’s gave away a $7.98 electric clock lamp to every customer Wadlow greeted: “Let the World’s Biggest Boy give you the biggest free gift we’ve ever offered!”
In the beginning of July in 1940, Wadlow appearing at a festival in Michigan, sponsored by his shoe company, a fatal sore formed under a leg brace, causing an infection to set in. Local hospitals were unable to properly accommodate him, allowing the infection to linger. As it worsened he developed a fever of 106 degrees. Doctors finally performed a minor surgery and gave the giant a blood transfusion, but it was to no avail. Sadly, Robert Wadlow died on July 15 at the young age of twenty-two. He had still been growing.
Read more about Robert Wadlow in my book, American Sideshow, and scroll below for footage and more remarkable images.
Robert Wadlow at age 13, featured in The Evening Star, July 24, 1931. He stood 7′-4″ in this photo and weighed 290 pounds.
Robert Wadlow as pictured in the 1984 Guinness Book of World Records.
Robert Wadlow featured in The Sunday Star, March 19, 1939.
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