Robert Wadlow was an attraction for Ringling Brothers in 1935.

Robert Pershing Wadlow was born in 1918 in Alton, Illinois, and never stopped growing during his brief life because of a pituitary gland malfunction. The tallest human being in recorded history, Wadlow reached close to nine feet high before his death in 1940. British Pathé made a pair of 35-second newsreels about him, in which he appeared to be a good-natured guy with an artistic side. Watch them here and here.

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