What do you think of this fact?
A basketball hoop hangs at 3.05 meters. Robert Wadlow could nearly have touched it standing still, without jumping. He was the tallest person ever reliably measured.
2.72 meters
Robert Pershing Wadlow was born on February 22, 1918, in Alton, Illinois. According to Guinness World Records, he reached a height of 2.72 meters (8 feet 11.1 inches). Nobody has broken that record to this day.
As a baby, Wadlow was a normal size. But he grew and grew and never stopped. The cause was his pituitary gland, which was far too active.
Huge feet, huge hands
According to Guinness, Wadlow wore US shoe size 37AA. One shoe was about 47 centimeters (18.5 inches) long. His arm span was 2.88 meters, almost three meters from fingertip to fingertip.
Of course, you couldn’t buy shoes that size in a store. They had to be specially made. According to ScienceAlert, a pair cost 100 US dollars back then, a lot of money for the time.
Bonus fact: According to Guinness, at age nine Wadlow carried his father, who was 1.8 meters tall, up the stairs of the family home.
His hands set a record too. According to Guinness, they measured 32.4 centimeters from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. At 17, he was already 2.45 meters tall, also a record for a teenager.
According to ScienceAlert, Wadlow was known as a “gentle giant” and earned money from public appearances. He learned at age 12 that an overactive pituitary gland was behind his growth.
If you want to picture 2.72 meters: that’s about the height of a normal ceiling. Most people would only have reached his chest.