Wadlow enjoyed both guitar and photography, but as he got older, his hands were too huge to perform either. His immense girth started to take its toll: he needed leg braces to walk and was frequently experiencing leg and foot numbness. He, however, refused to use a wheelchair and insisted on standing on his own two feet for the remainder of his life. As a modest, quiet, and mild-mannered young man, he earned the nickname âGentle Giant.â
Doctors administered a blood transfusion and performed emergency surgery, but his health deteriorated as a result of an auto-immune illness. He died in his sleep on July 15, 1940, at the age of 22. His funeral was attended by at least 27,000 people. He was buried in a concrete vault out of concern for the purity of his corpse. Following Robert Wadlow's death, his family supposedly burned practically all of his possessions, save for his shoes.
Robert Pershing Wadlow (February 22, 1918 – July 15, 1940), popularly known as the Alton Giant and the Illinois Giant, was an American man who is undisputedly the tallest person in recorded history. Originally from Alton, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, he was born and reared there. Wadlow was 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m) tall and weighed 439 lb (199 kg) at the time of his death at the age of 22. His enormous stature and continuing development throughout adulthood were caused by pituitary hyperplasia, which results in an unusually high dose of human growth hormone (HGH). Even after his death, there was no evidence that his development had ceased.
Wadlow was a Master Mason and a member of the Order of DeMolay. He was a member of Alton's Franklin Lodge No. 25, where a chamber has been dedicated to his memory. His Masonic ring was the biggest ever created, weighing two ounces of pure gold and measuring a size 25. Robert Wadlow at the age of ten
