Gabriel Estêvão Monjane, born in Manjacaze in 1944 and passing away in Maputo on January 15, 1990, was a Mozambican circus performer who stood really, really tall (8 ft 0.75 in). In fact, Gabriel Monjane was the tallest living person in the world between 1988 and 1989. After he passed away, Suleiman Ali Nashnush, the tallest basketball player ever, became the new tallest living man.
The 20th Tallest Person Ever
At 8 feet 0.75 inches (245.75 cm) Gabriel Monjane is the 20th tallest person ever documented after the ones like Bernard Coyne, Leonid Stadnyk, John Rogan, and Robert Wadlow, the tallest man ever in history. He was so tall that he was the tallest human among the 5.1 billion people on the planet. He is also one of the 24 people who were recorded to be over 8 feet.
Gabriel Monjane was born in a little town called Manjacaze in the southern part of Mozambique in East Africa. But here’s the wild part: Monjane didn’t stop growing after a certain age, like most people do. Instead, he just kept on growing due to his super-active pituitary gland and the gigantism condition.
This gland, which is the size of a pea and located at the base of your brain, is like a small control center for how much you grow. By the time Monjane was just 17, he was already 7 feet 10 inches (238 cm).
A Circus Giant
And guess what? Monjane decided to use his super tall height to be the main show at the Boswell Wilkie Circus, which had been in business for close to 75 years in South Africa. In other sources, he worked in a Portuguese circus.
They even exaggerated his height and claimed that he was in fact 8 feet 2 inches tall (250 cm). He later became a big hit at a famous amusement park in Stockholm called Gröna Lund too.
The Downsides
Monjane’s extreme height came from a condition called gigantism, which is the result of a tumor in the pituitary gland that results in an excess release of growth hormone across the body.
And, like many other people with gigantism, all that growth had its downsides. He was extremely tall but also fragile; his joints were relatively weak, and he was never as strong as his stature implied.
In 1987, when he was officially measured for the first time, Monjane was 8 feet 0.45 inches tall (245 cm) and weighed around 420 pounds (190 kg). Monjane was like a real-life giant! The Guinness Book of World Records declared that he was the tallest person in the whole world in 1988.
His Death
Sadly, being so tall wasn’t easy on his body. His legs hurt a lot, and things got worse when he fell and broke his hip. That’s one of the largest bones in the body. Gabriel Monjane eventually passed away at the age of 46 in January 1990 when he fell down the stairs at his home in Maputo, Mozambique.
This is similar to the story of Robert Wadlow when the tallest person in the world died in 1905 due to a damaged ankle and the resulting infection. Monjane is believed to have succeeded Zeng Jinlian, one of two women in history over 8 feet. And he was either succeeded by the Libyan Suleiman Ali Nashnush or the Pakistani Alam Channa.
References
- Jet – Google Books
- The tallest man Mozambique Portugal, on thetallestman.com.