39,327
edits
Our Giants Are Bigger: Difference between revisions
m
categories and general cleanup
(→Real Life: clean up) |
m (categories and general cleanup) |
||
Line 153:
* Persons with gigantism, a pituitary-related health condition leading to extreme height, were commonly featured in old-time sideshows. Promoters of such entertainments often boasted of (and shamelessly exaggerated) the extraordinary tallness of their performers. (To medically qualify as a giant, one must be 7 feet and up.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantism\]
* 18th and 19th century anatomists often collected unusual human skeletons, and those of human giants -- the taller, the better -- were among the most sought-after. Charles Byrne, an 8'2" Irishman who died in 1783, was so afraid of being skeletonized that he asked for his lead coffin to be sunken in the Thames. {{spoiler|It was, but it was empty: Byrnes' body had already been stolen.}}
* ''[
{{reflist}}
| |||