Robert Wadlow

AKA:
Alton's Gentle Giant
Birth Name:
Robert Pershing Wadlow
Birth Date:
February 22, 1918
Birth Place:
Alton, Illinois
Death Date:
July 15, 1940
Place of Death:
Hotel Chippewa, Manistee, Michigan
Age:
22
Cause of Death:
Wound infection
Cemetery Name:
Upper Alton Cemetery
Claim to Fame:
The Odd and the Interesting
Robert Pershing Wadlow, also known as Alton's Gentle Giant and the Giant of Illinois, was an American man who was the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence. He was born and raised in Alton, Illinois, a small city near St. Louis, Missouri. His great size and his continued growth in adulthood were due to hypertrophy of his pituitary gland, which results in an abnormally high level of human growth hormone (HGH). By the time of his graduation from Alton High School in 1936, he was 8 feet 4 inches tall and measured almost 9 feet tall at the time of his death. Wadlow became a celebrity after his 1936 U.S. tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus, appearing at Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden in the center ring (never in the sideshow). During his appearances, he dressed in his everyday clothes and refused the circus's request that he wear a top hat and tails. In 1938, he began a promotional tour with the International Shoe Company, which provided him shoes free of charge, again only in his everyday street clothes. Wadlow saw himself as working in advertising, not exhibiting as a freak. He possessed great physical strength until the last few days of his life.

Robert Pershing Wadlow by the numbers:

  • Height – 8 feet 11.1 inches
  • Weight – 439 lbs
  • Shoe Size – 37AA
  • Hand Size – 12.5 inches
  • Ring Size – 25
  • Coffin – 10 foot 9 inch long steel coffin that weighed 1,000 lbs
  • Pallbearers – 20 men

The life-sized bronze statue of Robert Wadlow was sculpted by Edward Englehardt Giberson and stands across the street from the Alton Museum of History and Art. A bronze chair, replicated after his seat at the Masonic Lodge, sits beside the statue.

The Wadlow Family Home is located at 2810 College Avenue in Alton, Illinois.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Upper Alton Cemetery

2090 Oakwood Avenue

Alton, Illinois, 62002

USA

North America

Map:

Map of Upper Alton Cemetery (aka Oakwood Cemetery) in Alton, Illinois
Map of Upper Alton Cemetery (aka Oakwood Cemetery) in Alton, Illinois

Grave Location:

Section 4

Grave Location Description

There are several gates available to enter this cemetery (also known as Oakwood Cemetery). If you enter through Gate #6 drive ahead to the first intersection and turn right on Cole Drive. Continue straight ahead through 4 intersections and park your car at Cole Drive and Jackson Drive. The World’s Tallest Man is buried beneath the tall 7-foot obelisk with several other Wadlow family members about 4 monuments from the road.

Grave Location GPS

38.915915053692466, -90.15598856552067

Photos:

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Read More About Robert Wadlow:

Videos Featuring Robert Wadlow:
The "Alton Giant" - World's Tallest Man
The Tragic Giant - dead at 22. Robert Wadlow almost 9 feet tall
The Story of Robert Wadlow Documentary
Robert Wadlow Ripley's Believe It or Not Interview! (1937)
Robert Wadlow, Tallest Man Ever: Life in Photos
Tallest man ever Robert Wadlow’s height in every year of his life
Robert Wadlow Is The Tallest Man In The World Standing 7 Feet Tall At Age 12
Robert Wadlow, "The Alton Giant" Centennial

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Quinta Maggia McDonald

popular name: Quinta Maggia McDonald

date_of_death: December 7, 1929

age: 29

cause_of_death: Radium sarcoma, industrial poisoning

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Quinta Maggia McDonald was the middle child of seven Maggia sisters; listed in order of age: Louise, Clara, Albina, Mollie, Quinta, Irma and Josephine. Children of Italian immigrants, Albina, Mollie, Quinta and Irma all worked in the radium-dial factory. Quinta was recruited to work at the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey as a dial-painter. Like her sisters she would end up paying the price. The initial effects of radium seemed harmless, and the substance was popular amongst the younger girls in the factory. They would go home from a day of painting with their clothes glowing from the radium exposure. Some would even paint the buttons on their dresses or their nails, but the joy of the radium glow was short lived. Long-term radiation sickness symptoms soon became present among many of the women who worked with radium paint. Common issues included bone cancer, anemia, lesions, and sores. These problems were exhibited in Amelia Maggia, the first dial painter to die from radiation sickness. After Amelia's death, Quinta initially went to the doctor complaining of dental pain where her teeth began to just drop out of her mouth. Unlike her sister before her, she received a diagnoses of radium poisoning and was told there was no cure. Sometime later she noticed pain in her ankles, legs and hips and was put into plaster casts to keep her immobile in the chance this might bring some relieve. Upon her final hospitalization the doctors noticed a large sarcoma on her leg - the kind of bone tumor that killed a fellow Radium Girl a year before. She eventually lapsed into a coma and died at the age of 29 leaving behind two young children.

W W Pool

popular name: W W Pool

date_of_death: February 26, 1922

age: 79

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: William Pool was a well respected account manager and bookkeeper for the wealthy and influential Bryan estate. His wife died in 1913 with William passing away several years later. They are entombed at Hollywood Cemetery and you would think that would be the end of the story. Years later local residents claim that the mausoleum of W. W. Pool (dated 1913) in Hollywood Cemetery holds the remains of a vampire with the rumor that Pool was run out of England in the 1800s for being a blood-sucking creature of the night. The legend may have been influenced by the architecture of the tomb, which has both Masonic and ancient Egyptian elements, and the "WW" over the entry to the crypt looking like fangs. At the same time another version of events began on October 2, 1925, when a disastrous cave-in at the Church Hill Tunnel occurred, with tons of rock and soil crashing down on a work train, killing, trapping and wounding several laborers. Shortly after the catastrophe, eyewitnesses saw a horrific creature running from the tunnel’s end – with fanglike teeth and rolls of decomposing flesh hanging from its body. The creature is said to have sprinted into Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery and disappeared into the mausoleum of W.W. Pool where today the iron doors remain sealed to prevent the creature from escaping.

Friederike Hauffe

popular name: Friederike Hauffe

date_of_death: August 25, 1829

age: 27

cause_of_death: Unknown - multiple health issues

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Friederike Hauffe was a German mystic and somnambulist. She suffered from convulsions, and fell into spontaneous trances. Frederike claimed to have communicated with spirits and experienced visions, and she was made famous by the physician Justinus Kerner who examined her at Weinsberg in 1826. Kerner recorded alleged instances of clairvoyance and prophetic dreams. She drew with tremendous speed perfect geometrical designs in the dark, used the divining rod with great skill, exhibited disturbances of a poltergeist character, and communicated extraordinary revelations from the spirit world.

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