The controversy surrounding the remains of an old man of unprecedented growth has not subsided for over 100 years. Before were the Indians taller? In 1895, the California newspaper The World (October 7, 1895) reported a well-preserved Indian mummy, which was discovered by a team of prospectors in a cave near San Diego.
The size of the find was shocking. The growth of the Indian, whose remains were delivered to scientists, during his lifetime exceeded 274 centimeters. One word giant is "the biggest giant ever known," as the authors of the note define it.
The mummy was named the "Giant of San Diego" and began to be shown to the general public in different states.
Reporters emphasized that the mummified remains were examined by Prof. Thomas Wilson, curator of the Department of Prehistoric Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution's Curator of the Department of Prehistoric Anthropology in the Smithsonian Institution, and assured that they were genuine.
Scientists did not establish the age of the mummy - they only estimated that it was over 250 years old. And it was determined that the tall Indian was a deep old man.
Among the Indians of North America, there were legends about a tribe of giants who once inhabited local lands. The "pale-faced" did not believe the legends.
Time has passed. And another newspaper, The Salt Lake tribune (June 07, 1908, Page 17), remembered the unprecedentedly tall mummy. Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution again appeared next to the remains. Journalists reported that they bought the "Giant from San Diego", having arrived at the exhibition in Atlanta, where the "Indian" was then exhibited. Paid $ 500. Which corresponds to about 15 thousand current dollars. The exhibit was sold by a certain Mr. Lucas.
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And then it turned out: the mummy is fake. Instead of skin, she has dried gelatin, instead of hair, tow. The bones are human, but are pushed apart at the joints to "stretch" the body. The undoubted falsification was assured by Professor WJ McGee, one of the leaders of the US Bureau of Ethnology, who carried out the examination.
It turns out they've been fooled? What baseness … What if some other supernatural-looking mummies are also fake?
The disclosure of 100 years ago is still remembered today. But it is not the "sculptors" who created the "Giant of San Diego" who are accused of shameless falsification of history, but the scientists of the Smithsonian Institution. They say that the mummy was real, and those - insidious - specifically declared it to be fake and removed from sin, so as not to spoil the picture of the world in which real giants were not found, except that unsubstantiated legends circulated about them.
Enthusiastic conspiracy theorists explain: decisive actions to conceal the "truth" began after at the end of the nineteenth century in North America, prospectors began to find many giant skeletons - more than 3 meters tall and above. The Smithsonians ransomed and destroyed them. The fate of the "Giant from San Diego" allegedly confirms this.
And not so long ago it became known that the US Supreme Court granted the claim of the American Institute of Alternative Archeology (AIAA). And he ordered the Smithsonian Institution to publish documents that it improperly classified, and admitted that its employees destroyed the giant skeletons that the institute had inherited.
Does this mean that information about falsification is falsification itself? And the "Giant from San Diego", together with his fellow tribesmen who grew even taller, still existed in nature? Alas, not a fact.
The Smithsonian does exist. But the American Institute of Alternative Archeology has never existed and never has. The abbreviation AIAA hides the innocent American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics).
Enthusiasts have long figured out: information about the trial, allegedly calling the Smithsonians to account, first appeared on the "clown" site World News Daily Report, which specializes in funny forgeries that seem plausible. Once he reported that the staff of our Russian Hermitage, while dismantling the objects left after Stalin, found among them the skull of Adolf Hitler.
The authors of the site are joking. And they joked about the secret giant skeletons on December 3, 2014. But now this news is walking around as serious.
So where is the truth? No answer. Although archaeologists are quite capable of hiding it.
Speaking of giants
Robert Wadlow. Birthday: 1918-22-02. Place of birth: Alton, Illinois, USA. Date of death: 1940-15-07. Place of death: Manistee, Michigan, USA.
Wadlow, known by the nicknames "Good Giant", "Altonian Giant" and "Giant of Illinois", was the tallest man in history.
Robert's abnormally high growth hormone levels were caused by pituitary hyperplasia. Wadlow never stopped reaching for the sky until his very last breath; at the time of his death, with a weight of 199 kg, he reached 2.72 m.
Robert Pershing Wadlow, the son of Eddie Johnson and Harold Wadlow, was born on February 22, 1918, in Alton, Illinois (Alton, Illinois), and was the eldest of five children in the family. Until the age of four, parents did not notice any anomalies in their first-born. However, after that the boy began to grow by leaps and bounds.
Having reached the age of eight, Robert overtook his father in height. Attending elementary school, Wadlow sat down at a special desk made to fit his non-standard dimensions. By the time he graduated from Altona High School, by 1936, the boy's height was 2.54 m. With a high school diploma, Robert entered Chartleff College with the intention of studying law.
The giant youth faced serious difficulties caused by his pathology. He used leg braces, in other words, crutches, without which he could not move normally. The abnormal developmental rate affected Wadlow's limited sensation, especially in the area starting from the hips and ending with the feet. However, the tall American preferred to do without a wheelchair altogether, which could make his life easier.
Robert earned celebrity status in 1936 when, along with going to college, he went on tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus. In 1938, the giant participated in an advertising tour of the International Shoe Company, known since 1966 under the name INTERCO. The company supplied its special client with shoes for free.
Samples of the giant Wadlow shoes exist to this day, at several locations throughout the United States, including Snyder's Shoe in Ludington, Manistee, Michigan, and the Alton Museum of History and art.
Without ceasing to arouse great interest among the crowd, Robert constantly participated in various tours and appeared in public, however, already in his usual everyday clothes, unlike circus numbers. Wadlow was famous not only for his height, but also for the enormous physical strength that gushed in him until the very last year of his short life. Then his strength and health in general began to deteriorate rapidly.
Wadlow was a member of the Order de Molay, a paramasonic initiatory organization for children whose fathers were members of the brotherhood of free masons. In 1939, Robert applied to Franklin Lodge # 25 in Altona, Illinois, and at the end of November of that year became a third-degree Freemason under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Illinois. Wadlow's Freemasonry Ring is the largest ever made.
A year before his death, The Kind Giant overtook the previous world record holder, John Rogan, whose height was 2.44 m. With his indicator of 2.72 m, he displaced Rogan to the second place on the list of the tallest people on the planet. The official measurement was made on June 27, 1940, eight days before Robert's death, by two doctors from the University of Washington in St. Louis, Missouri (St. Louis, Missouri).
On July 4, 1940, Wadlow performed in Manistee at the National Independence Day Festival. A faulty crutch rubbed the giant's leg, which caused a blister to appear, and behind it an infection that quickly spilled over into sepsis. The doctors who immediately responded underwent a blood transfusion and emergency surgery, but the patient's condition continued to deteriorate due to an autoimmune disorder.
On July 15, 1940, eleven days after the blood poisoning, 22-year-old Robert died in his sleep. He was buried at Oakwood Cemetery. According to reports, about 40 thousand people came to say goodbye to the tallest man in the world (according to other sources, 27 thousand). A huge coffin, weighing half a ton, carried twelve people.
The family of Robert feared that his remains might be kidnapped, and for this reason they asked to concrete his grave. The request was granted.
A life-size statue of Robert Wadlow was installed at College Avenue, opposite the Altona Museum of History and Art, in 1986. Another statue of a giant is in the Guinness Museum, near Niagara Falls.
Finally, another life-size statue of Wadlow is on display at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan (Farmington Hills, Michigan). A small screen is installed in front of the statue, on which a short documentary film "about the amazing but short life of a giant" is played.
The 1998 song, "The Giant of Illinois," first sung by The Handsome Family and later sung by Andrew Bird, was coined in honor of Wadlow.
In 2005, American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens recorded "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders" about Wadlow; the song was featured on Stevens' concept album 'Illinois'.
A black and white photo of Wadlow and his family was used for the back cover of the Talking Heads' Storytelling Giant VHS video.