World’s Tallest Man Marries 5′ 5″ Woman

Bao Xishun ®, 56, a 2.36-metre (7 feet, 9 inches) herds­man listed by the Guin­ness World Records as the tallest liv­ing man, and his bride Xia Shu­juan, 29, 1.68 metres (5 feet, 5 inches), stand dur­ing their wed­ding cer­e­mony on the out­skirts of Erdos in north China’s Inner Mon­go­lia Autonomous Region July 12, 2007. The world’s tallest man, whose search for a bride cov­ered the world, ended up mar­ry­ing a woman from his home town nearly half his age and more than two feet shorter, Chi­nese media reported.

World’s tallest man mar­ries on Yahoo! News Pho­tos via Digg

Update: Here is a pic­ture of the world’s tallest man, Bao Xishun, shak­ing hands with He Ping­ping, a con­tender for the title of world’s short­est man (2-feet, 5-inches tall).

Update 2 (03÷24÷08) — Here is an arti­cle on Leonid Stad­nik, a for­mer Ukrain­ian vet­eri­nar­ian who is 2.59 meters (8,5 feet) tall. Accord­ing to the arti­cle, the Guin­ness Book of Records now calls him the world’s tallest liv­ing man.

In 2006, Stad­nik was offi­cially mea­sured at 2.57 meters tall (8 feet 5 inches), sur­pass­ing a Chi­nese man to claim the title of the world’s tallest person.

His growth spurt began at age 14 after a brain oper­a­tion that appar­ently stim­u­lated the over­pro­duc­tion of growth hor­mone. Doc­tors say he has been grow­ing ever since.