9 feet high
and a man and a woman almost 10 feet. Ainsworth says that in 1553 the
Tower of London was guarded by three brothers claiming direct descent
from Henry VIII, and surnamed Og, Gog, and Magog, all of whom were over
8 feet in height. In his "Chronicles of Holland" in 1557 Hadrianus
Barlandus said that in the time of John, Earl of Holland, the giant
Nicholas was so large that men could stand under his arms, and his shoe
held 3 ordinary feet. Among the yeoman of the guard of John Frederick,
Duke of Hanover, there was one Christopher Munster, 8 1/2 feet high,
who died in 1676 in his forty-fifth year. The giant porter of the Duke
of Wurtemberg was 7 1/2 feet high. "Big Sam," the porter at Carleton
Palace, when George IV was Prince of Wales, was 8 feet high. The porter
of Queen Elizabeth, of whom there is a picture in Hampton Court,
painted by Zucchero, was 7 1/2 feet high; and Walter Parson, porter to
James I, was about the same height. William Evans, who served Charles
I, was nearly 8 feet; he carried a dwarf in his pocket.

In the seventeenth century, in order to gratify the Empress of Austria,
Guy-Patin made a congress of all the giants and dwarfs in the Germanic
Empire. A peculiarity of this congress was that the giants complained
to the authorities that the dwarfs teased them in such a manner as to
make their lives miserable.

Plater speaks of a girl in Basle, Switzerland, five years old, whose
body was as large as that of a full-grown woman and who weighed when a
year old as much as a bushel of wheat. He also mentions a man living in
1613, 9 feet high, whose hand was 1 foot 6 inches long. Peter van den
Broecke speaks of a Congo negro in 1640 who was 8 feet high. Daniel,
the porter of Cromwell, was 7 feet 6 inches high; he became a lunatic.

Frazier speaks of Chilian giants 9 feet tall. There is a chronicle
which says one of the Kings of Norway was 8 feet high. Merula says
that in 1538 he saw in France a Flemish man over 9 feet. Keysler
mentions seeing Hans Brau in Tyrol in 1550, and says that he was nearly
12 feet high.

Jonston mentions a lad in Holland who was 8 feet tall. Pasumot mentions
a giant of 8 feet.

Edmund Mallone was said to have measured 7 feet 7 inches. Wierski, a
Polander, presented to Maximilian II, was 8 feet high. At the age of
thirty-two there died in 1798 a clerk of the Bank of England who was
said to have been nearly 7 1/2 feet high. The Daily Advertiser for
February 23, 1745,