PHENOMENAL BOY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 9

PHENOMENAL BOY.

YOUNG GIANT IN ILLINOIS.

OVER 7FT HIGH AT AGE OF 13.

CROWDS WILL FOLLOW HIM,

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, March 18,

Robert Wadlow, or Upper Alton, Illinois, is as pleasant and normal a 13-year-old schoolboy as one would wish to meet. Normal except in one respect. Robert is seven feet four inches in height and during the past year he has grown four inches. At that rate, if Robert keejos on, by the time he is a man he will rival the famous Russian giant, Machnow, who was nine feet three inches, taller than any giant outside the fairy stories. Even now, he is bigger than Primo Camera.

Robert finds that being a giant is somewhat awkward, for sometimes he bumps into things like chandeliers and the tops of doorways, but his awkwardness is no more than that of any 13-year-old boy, and he is getting clever at avoiding obstacles. The neighbourhood children get under his feet when he plays with them, Robert laments. And whenever he goes into the streets crowds follow him. But the youthful giant just laughs at that. "I know how they feel," ho says. "I like to see midgets myself. I suppose I seem just as queer to them as they do to me."

Two hundred and seventy-two pounds standing in a pair of No. 25 shoes does not prevent Robert from having the normal interest of any boy of 13. He is thrilted by adventure books, and reads lots of them. He likes mechanics, though he is too big to get under the wheel of an automobile himself. He is in the eighth grade at high school. Robert's parents and their three other children are all of normal size. Robert weighed 91b at birth, 301b at the age of six months and G2lb at the age of 18 months.

Scientists say that his extraordinary growth is due to over activity of the pituitary gland. But that does ncft worry the young giant in the least. "I suppose I ought to bo interested in that sort of thing," he says, "but it does not worry me any."