Monday, September 24, 2012

Gentle Giant


The Bible speaks of giants walking the earth, "Sons of God" married earth women and their children became giants and men of renown. Apparently they survived the deluge, because giants are mentioned again as occupiers of the "Promised Land" before the Children of Israel took it over. King Og was a giant. Other ancient writings mention giants too.

Today, our giants are people with growth hormone problems. Oddities. Many basketball players are giants by definition. Our giants today don't match the height of the fabled giants of old who were supposed by many to be children of extraterrestrial beings.

The tallest human on record, one who was actually alive and walking around among us, that is, was one Robert Wadlow of Indiana, who stood nearly 9 feet tall (8 ft-11 inches.) He only lived to be 22 years old. I found his story to be sad and tragic, yet somehow heroic and inspirational at the same time. He was a very gentle giant. He died in 1940.

As a child I saw one of his shoes on a traveling display at a shoe store downtown.
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Below: Robert Wadlow (1) as an adolescent and (2) shortly before his death.


6 comments:

  1. You're right, it's sad, especially so that he died so young. I keep forgetting how relatively recently antibiotics came into use.

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    1. I thought it was sad too. He seemed like a nice person. He got some kind of infection in his foot from those shoes. Or something.

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  2. I failed to ask Google the right question. So, I failed to find his name, but I was told that I met the reportedly world's tallest man at the time in a grocery store in Minnesota back in the early 60s. If I remember right, he was over 8 feet tall, and my mom said that I found him quite fascinating.

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    1. It is amazing how tall some people can get. I found a website that shows a record of everyone that tall and there were about a hundred, believe it or not. They had stars by names of the ones who are still alive. Most of them look like it hurts them to walk. Of course, I don't know how tall you are, so this might be commonplace to you. :) I was reading about the giants in Genesis and one thing led to another.

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  3. I would take the assertions that ancient "giants" were outlandishly "giant" in Biblical (or thereabout) with a grain of salt. I've never heard of anyone unearthing bones of people taller than eight feet and, everything's relative.

    A European was a relative giant in ancient Japan.

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    1. A grasshopper is a giant to an ant.

      You are a skeptic on certain things Biblical? I am shocked. As you probably surmise. But then, I am skeptical of certain things evolutionary. For example, I don't believe Darwin ever existed. A bald man with a decent beard hired to front the atheists if you ask me.

      Oh, wait. You didn't ask me. Well, where is your proof that monstrous giants didn't exist in olden times? I'd like you to show me one iota of proof that they didn't come and then leave in a spaceship.

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