In the photo: Portrait of Queen Henrietta Mary with the dwarf Geoffrey Hudson.
People who are incredibly tall or, conversely, surprisingly short, have always attracted increased attention. There was a time when they caused fear or divine awe. It was believed that giants and dwarfs were noted by the Creator's attention and are his chosen ones. Therefore, the reigning persons surrounded themselves with dwarfs and giants. The first ones seemed to bring good luck, and at the same time they made kings, kings and emperors happy. The latter successfully performed responsible duties in the matter of personal protection of the reigning persons
One of the most famous dwarfs that left a long memory behind was Geoffrey Hudson, who was born in England in 1619. He had the honor to serve at the court of King Charles I of England. Even at the age of eight, when Geoffrey's height barely reached 37 centimeters, this boy with a finger … was served to the king's table in a pie! At the age of 13, the growth of the dwarf was only 76 centimeters.
Hudson was a desperate duelist who always defended his honor and dignity in front of any offender, whoever he was. So, one day a queen who adored a dwarf, shortly before her birth, sent him to France for a midwife. On the way, he was insulted by a man from his retinue, who had the imprudence to laugh at his tiny stature. Jeffrey challenged the abuser to a duel and laid him down with the first shot. This brave little man is perhaps best known for another Duel in England, in which he fought a turkey who stole his dinner and thereby insulted him to the core. The bird was several pounds heavier and considerably taller than him, but Jeffrey eventually defeated the enemy and ate the offender with his friends, thus celebrating his victory.
In later times, the owners of circuses, booths, and entertainment establishments began to pay attention to people with certain growth anomalies. One of the most famous dwarfs of the last century was Charles Stratton, who for many years performed under the name Tom Thumb. On the income from his performances, Tom supported not only himself, but also his family It is noteworthy that he himself acted as his impresario. The dwarf received world fame and died a rich man.
The smallest woman in the world was Polina Masters, who lived in the last century. With a height of 59 centimeters, she weighed 4.5 kilograms. The real Thumbelina, Polina, performed in a circus and died at the age of nineteen from pneumonia. For her slenderness and grace, the girl was called a statuette.
And nowadays doctors are perplexed by the phenomenon of Honduran Walter Lopez Reines. In 1996, the growth of this ten-year-old boy with a finger was only 43 centimeters with a weight of 6 kilograms. But what surprises the doctors is that with such abnormal physical development, Walter has no mental abnormalities. He successfully studies at school and, according to local newspapers, dreams of becoming an adult as soon as possible in order to buy a car and drive it with his girlfriend.
Doctors believe that dwarfs and giants are the result of the malfunctioning of a special gland, the pituitary gland, which produces growth hormone. If it is too little, the growth of a person slows down and may stop at a tender age - this is how dwarf people are obtained. If there are too many, growth accelerates and reaches gigantic proportions - in this case, giant people grow.
Unlike dwarfs, the reliability of their growth is usually almost beyond doubt, it is often very difficult to accurately determine the true growth of giant people: they are all somehow connected with advertising and commerce, and therefore are surrounded by a fog of exaggeration, and often lies. The only reliable evidence is only that which was collected in the 20th century under impartial medical supervision. Unfortunately, the doctors themselves are not always perfect - it happens that they put down invented numbers that have nothing to do with the real ones.
Usually, the giants, who are shown in circuses and at exhibitions, sign a contract, according to the terms of which they should not be subjected to anthropometric measurements. For the most part, their height, which is indicated in the posters, is exaggerated and the "correction" can be up to half a meter.
At the same time, even at the dawn of human history, giants amazed the imagination of people and became heroes of myths and legends. In the Bible, this is Goliath of Gefah, amused by throwing boulders the size of a cabbage head, striking the ranks of enemies. His death at the hands of David is a lesson in strategy, as well as a clear example of how, with skillful combat and resourcefulness, you can defeat a stronger opponent. However, to all appearances, the height of Goliath, who lived in the 11th century BC, which supposedly was 290 centimeters (6 cubits and one inch), is significantly overestimated, which may be due to confusion in units of measurement or to enthusiastic exaggeration of chroniclers. The ancient Greek historian Flavius Josephus, who lived in the 1st century AD, and some of the earliest translations of the Old Testament into Greek, attribute to Goliath a very plausible growth:4 Greek cubits and one span - 208 centimeters.
Ancient sources also mention another giant - Orestes. The Greeks, who measured him for funerals, say that he was slightly more than three meters tall. It was also said that during the reign of Emperor Augustus, the slaves working in the gardens of Sallust stumbled upon two huge graves, carved into the rock and carefully camouflaged. Upon examination, it was established that they contained the remains of the giants who guarded these gardens, Skundilla and Posio, whose height reached almost three meters. Their well-known cruelty and sheer size produced a terrifying impression on thieves and robbers, forcing them to keep their distance. When both giants died, the corpses were hidden, and nothing was reported about their death. Thus, the bad reputation of the giants served the interests of the owners of the gardens for a long time.
According to Josephus Flavius, among the hostages sent by the Persian king to Rome was Eleazar, the Jewish giant, over 330 centimeters tall. He was not distinguished by any special physical strength or weight, but at the table he was an outstanding eater. The Romans pitted him against eaters known for their appetite, and Eleazar always won these competitions, not deceiving the expectations of those who bet on him.
The most real mountain man was the Emperor Maxim. His height was more than 2 meters 40 centimeters. The emperor's facial features also stood out in size - all due to a rare disease known as acromegaly, which gives extraordinary physical strength. The shepherd Maxim, after becoming emperor, amused himself by competing in strength with two obese fighters at the same time. This was not approved by his own soldiers, who killed Maxim on June 17, 238.
And in the historical chronicles of the XII century it is said that a local giant 3.5 meters in height was once brought to the court of the Scottish king Eugene! The monster looked pale and sickly, so the king ordered to remove it, fearing the spread of the disease among the inhabitants of the castle …
Born in Ireland in 1761, Charles O'Brien is one of Europe's most famous giants. By the age of 17, his height was 254 centimeters and stopped there. The owners of the entertainment establishments went to great lengths to get Charles on their stage, but he was not so easy, because he realized that he could do without them. This is how the further fate of the giant Frank Edward, to whom we will refer more than once, outlines:
"… But at this time in O'Brien's Garden of Eden, a serpent suddenly appeared in the person of Dr. John Hunter, an omnipresent fellow who wanted to get the skeleton of a tall Irishman at all costs. Dr. Hunter turned to O'Brien with this proposal and threw the latter into horror. But the doctor vowed that the bones of the giant, will still belong to him. In recent years, O'Brien had to go into hiding for fear that Hunter would fulfill his threat."
Pursued by Hunter and his agents, O'Brien did not know rest. In 1783 he fell ill and realized that he did not have long to live. He made a deal with several fishermen to take his corpse, tie a lead weight to it and secretly drown him in the waters of the Irish Canal. A few weeks later, the giant learned that Dr. Hunter had bribed the fishermen and they pledged to deliver the body to him. The worried giant was forced to resort to other measures.
All his savings disappeared without a trace during his illness, and the poor man was forced, being ill, to appear on stage again in front of the public. One day O'Brien saw his tormentor in the crowd, very much like a vulture awaiting a victim. It is no wonder that the giant died of a nervous shock.
The friends swore to protect the giant's corpse and guard the grave day and night. But their generous gesture turned out to be meaningless, because Dr. Hunter managed to bribe the undertaker, who managed to replace the coffin at the funeral, and a coffin full of stones was lowered into the ground.
O'Brien's corpse became the property of the doctor, thanks to which the skeleton of the famous Irish giant is on display today in the museum of the Royal College of Surgery in Dublin.
Giants, as a rule, do not have significant physical strength. But there are no rules without exceptions, as evidenced by the fate of the famous giant strongman Angus Macaskill. He was born in 1825 in Scotland and, as a child, moved to America with his parents. It was there that when he was 13 years old, he began to grow surprisingly fast. In the twenty-first year of his life, his height was 236 centimeters, and according to the New York Medical Commission, the giant's chest volume was 175 centimeters and weighed 183 kilograms. Here is what F. Edward tells about the further fate of the giant:
“Barnum invited him to his troupe, and Angus Macaskill traveled to many countries, surprising the audience with his phenomenal strength. He lifted weights up to 680 kilograms. At the close of the curtain, MacAskill came out with a wooden plate in hand, on which Tom Thumb was dancing a jig.
When one famous professional boxer managed to persuade Angus to fight him in the ring, the fight ended unexpectedly quickly: MacAskill simply crushed the opponent's hand in his hand.
But there were still limits to his strength. Macaskill's career ended unexpectedly: he bet $ 1,000 that he would pull a ship's anchor weighing about a ton to the shore with his bare hands. During this occupation, he strained himself, injured his shoulder and spine. The wealthy Macaskill went to his home in Nova Scotia, where he died in 1863”.
In Menisot, Michigan, the same Edward reports, “On a sultry afternoon on July 15, 1940, an amazing young man named Robert Wadlow died. The young giant turned 22 years old, he weighed 223 kilograms with a height of 270 centimeters. On one leg, he wore a heavy metal bracelet with which he rubbed his leg, which caused blood poisoning and his untimely death. He was the tallest man recorded in the annals of modern medicine."
The tallest person who has ever seen the world is Fyodor Makhnov, who was born in Vitebsk in 1881. His height was 275 centimeters and weighed about 180 kilograms. Members of the Parisian Anthropological Fellowship showed great interest in the giant's extraordinary physical characteristics. They wanted to examine him more thoroughly, but Makhnov flatly refused to undress in front of the doctors and only allowed them to measure the length of their feet and palms, 45 and 35 centimeters, respectively!
Anthropologists noted that Makhnov is "one leg". If Fyodor had not had such long limbs, he would hardly have reached even average height. The small head made Fyodor look ridiculous. His ears were 15 centimeters long and his lips 10 centimeters wide. After Sunday rest, Makhnov always grew taller, and on weekdays his growth slightly decreased. This was caused by the ability of his spine to contract under the influence of heavy loads, and then stretch again.
Fedor ate four times a day, but his breakfast could feed an average family for two days! Every morning at nine o'clock, he drank two liters of tea, ate two dozen eggs and eight round loaves of bread and butter. The giant's dinner consisted of two and a half kilograms of meat, a kilogram of potatoes and three liters of beer. For dinner, he ate a bowl of fruit, two and a half kilograms of meat, three loaves of bread, and drank two liters of tea. Before going to bed, Fedor was refreshed with 15 eggs, a loaf of bread and a liter of tea. The largest person the earth has ever carried died in his own bed in October 1905.
Gigantism is common among men, but history has known many tall women, such as Sandy Allen - 238 centimeters tall, Katherine Bockner - 216 centimeters and, finally, Yana Boonfford - 236 centimeters, whose skeleton is exhibited in the University Museum of Birmingham. Ella Elving, born in Missouri in 1872, has been declared the tallest woman in the United States. She was 260 centimeters tall and weighed 130 kilograms.
There are known cases of giants getting married. In 1872, Anna Swann and Captain Martin Van Buren Bates were married. The husband was born on November 9, 1845 in Kentucky, and at the age of 14 he was enlisted in the 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Southern States. This man was an excellent target on the battlefield, as he was 230 centimeters tall and weighs 200 kilograms. At the age of 16, repeatedly wounded Martin for his courage was presented to the rank of captain. After the end of the war, he retired from the army and went into show business, where on one of the tours he met his future wife, the beautiful Anna Swann.
Anna, born in 1846, was the third child in the family. Already at the age of six, she first outgrew her mother (163 centimeters), and at the age of 16 she looked down at her. She reached her maximum height at the age of 19. Anna came to the attention of agents of the "king of show business" Barnum, who were tirelessly scouring in search of various curiosities. Her first performance as the tallest woman took place in New York.
Unfortunately, Barnum's theaters burned four times.
At the same time, Anna miraculously avoided death, but each time she lost most of her savings and personal belongings. This forced her to leave Barnum and enter into an agreement with an agent named Ingales, who organized several tours of "human curiosities" in Europe. It was during one of them in 1871 that she met Captain Bates.
The tallest couple in the world interested everyone, including Queen Victoria, who invited Anna and Martin to Buckingham Palace. On June 17, 1872, the young men entered into the "marriage of the year" at St Martin's in the presence of the cream of London society. Queen Victoria presented the spouses with a magnificent watch, and the young woman received from Her Majesty a beautiful wedding dress, which took 100 meters of snow-white satin and 50 meters of lace.
Four days later, a reception was held in honor of the newlyweds, to which, among others, the Russian Grand Duke Vladimir and Prince Jean from Luxembourg were invited. Communication with the monarchs, however, did not deter the couple from resuming their tour of Europe. A year later, Anna gave birth to a huge baby, weighing 9 kilograms, 70 centimeters long, who, unfortunately, soon died.
After that, the couple decided to leave the show business and bought a farm in Ohio. There they built a one-of-a-kind 18-room home. The ceilings were 4, 25 meters high, and the height of the door frames reached 360 centimeters. The furniture was made to order. The bed of giants, for example, was 340 centimeters long and 210 centimeters wide.
In 1878, Anna became pregnant again, and on June 18, 1879, labor began. Martin sent for Dr. Pitch, who was in shock. He had never seen anything like it in his medical practice. At first, more than 20 liters of amniotic fluid left, then a huge fetal head appeared. However, the child was stuck in the mother's womb, and the doctor's efforts did not lead to the desired result. They sent for an obstetrician, Dr. Robins, who arrived only 24 hours later. With great difficulty, the fetus was removed from the mother's womb with forceps, saving her from terrible suffering. The largest newborn in history weighed 12 kilograms and was 85 centimeters tall! Unfortunately, he did not survive the hardships of birth and died. His plaster cast can now be seen in the Cleveland Museum.
Anna died of heart failure on September 5, 1888 at the age of 42. Captain Bates called Cleveland and ordered a coffin. The undertaker, deciding that there was some mistake, sent a coffin of normal size, which delayed the burial for several days. In order to eliminate such problems in the future, Captain Bates ordered a coffin of the appropriate size for himself in advance, which for the time being was kept in his shed.
Giants are still found today. So, as of 1988, Gabriel Estavao Monjani was considered the tallest of earthlings. He was born in Mozambique in the town of Monjacazi. In 1967, the Portuguese circus advertised him as a giant with a height of 265 centimeters. In fact, Monjani's height was 245.7 centimeters with a weight of 189.6 kilograms. According to official figures, the tallest person living on Earth is the Tunisian Roduan, his height is 237 centimeters. It is said that he makes a living by taking pictures with tourists and receiving two dollars for each picture taken together.
But Australian Steve Martin, at the age of 16, has already grown to 207 centimeters and everything continues to grow! The dimensions of the young giant give his mother a lot of trouble. For example, she had to attach a special board to her son's bed so that he could freely stretch his legs. He needs to sew shoes and clothes to order - such sizes are practically not found in stores. And she is also worried about what will become of the child's psyche if over time he outgrows, say, a giraffe. Doctors competently explain that Steve has Klinefelter's syndrome (when there are two more chromosomes in the body than required), so he stretches in height. But these explanations do not make the guy's position any easier. However, he is not discouraged.
“In the summer we were on the seaside, and many tourists would queue up to take pictures with me,” says Steve. - It's inconvenient, but nothing. But I play basketball great!"
Today's teenagers in general often surprise us with their dimensions. For example, 14 year old English schoolboy Gareth Williams from Maidstone, with a height of 193 centimeters, wears shoes of the largest size in England - 63rd! But this is not the limit. For example, 23-year-old American Matthew McGrory has shoes already in size 75!
Gareth himself, others say, is a cheerful person by nature. He is ironic about the nickname given to him by his classmates - Big Foot. Talking about how quickly his legs grow, Gareth can hardly hold back a laugh: "In the morning I will wake up and I cannot recognize them." But his parents are not at all laughing. They have to shell out about £ 500 for each pair of tailor-made shoes, and in one year, my son had to change as many as three pairs of shoes! Bigfoot's biggest dream is to overtake the American. Then it will be included in the Guinness Book of Records and, for sure, some company will give a pair of sports boots for advertising purposes. Then the parents will get savings …
Today, the tallest teenager on Earth is considered Hindu Mohammed Iqbal Khandai. At 17, he has grown to 227 centimeters! But four years ago he was the same height as his peers - no more than 120 cm. Now the teenager is being examined at the Institute of Medical Sciences of the city of Srinagar. Doctors believe that if the "riot" of growth hormone is not stopped in time, the young man will grow to 272 centimeters.
And yet, a significant number of earthlings are concerned, unlike Gareth, Steve or Mohammed, not gigantism, but short stature. They are trying in every way to become at least somewhat higher. Some use high heels for this purpose, others wear clothes that hide the defect in their growth, while others are specially "stretched" using a set of special exercises.
It is known that a person's height changes throughout the day: in the morning he is 1 - 3 centimeters higher than in the evening. This is mainly due to the shape of the spine, which even in a slender person is not a vertical column, but a slightly curved one: forward, backward and forward again. The amount of bends can increase and decrease - the spine folds and straightens, as it were. In the morning, when we are full of energy, we are in good shape, the spine is straightened, and therefore our growth is maximum. During the day, and especially in the evening, fatigue accumulates, the spine settles, folds and growth decreases by 1 - 3 centimeters: The growth of stooped people can change even more. Some of them hunch down so much that they become “lower than themselves” by 5 - 7 and even 10 centimeters. But as soon as they straighten their shoulders, lean on - and they are already half their heads higher.
But the circus artist Frank Willard (USA) has shown such an unusual act for many years. A man of average height entered the arena. And then, right before the eyes of the stunned audience, his height began to increase rapidly. In a few minutes, Willard was growing as much as 20 centimeters! To understand this amazing phenomenon, scientists took X-rays of the artist during the performance. And that's what they found.
The shape of the spine is controlled by two opposing muscle groups: some try to bend it, others straighten it. Depending on which muscles are currently more tense, the spine either flexes or straightens. Willard's skill consisted in the fact that when he appeared on the arena, he strained the "flexing" muscles as much as possible, that is, "folded" the spine, thereby reducing his height. In the process of performing the act, the artist gradually relaxed the flexor muscles and straightened the “straightening” muscles as much as possible, straightening the spine. Thanks to this trick, he managed to "grow" a whole head in a few minutes.
Of course, what Willard did is unique. But, using special sets of exercises that train the straightening muscles of the spine, you can not only grow up, but at the same time make your figure more slender.
N. N. Nepomnyashchy. Phenomenon people
