The tallest man in recorded history is Robert Wadlow, at 8’ 11”. He weighed 480 pounds and wore a size 36 shoe.
The tallest man in recorded history is Robert Wadlow, at 8’ 11”. He weighed 480 pounds and wore a size 36 shoe.
He had the appropriate job of advertising for a shoe company.
He is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. He was measured three weeks before he died and was almost nine feet tall. He was born February 22, 1918 in Alton, Illinois weighing a near normal 8.7 pounds. His greatest weight was 491 pounds. His hands were about thirteen inches from the wrist to top of the middle finger and his shoes were size 37AA, that’s more than eighteen inches long. Before International Shoe Company provided free shoes, they cost $100.00 a pair (in today’s money that’s six to seven hundred dollars). Wadlow was still growing when he died.
During a trip he and his father were visiting 800 towns in 41 states for the shoe company. His dad removed the front passenger seat so Robert could sit in the back seat and stretch out his long legs.
In kindergarten he was 5’6” tall, wearing clothing that would fit a 17-year-old boy. In 1929 he had his first medical checkup where the family was told that the boy had an over active pituitary gland. Too late for Robert, medical science today can compensate for the problem. In 1931 he was the largest Boy Scout in the world at 7’4″ weighing 270 pounds. The “Gentle Giant” died July 15, 1940.
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