The 7 Strongest Giants in History

Seven men who were famous for their colossal height, size and strength, including the ‘Cape Breton Giant‘, ‘Canadian Colossus’ and ‘Childe of Hale’

Robert Wadlow is the tallest human being to have ever existed as verified by science, towering over all at 8 ft 11 in (2.72 m). Yet the same condition which made him so tall – Gigantism – made his body frail. There are men who’ve existed, however, with the height plus the strength to match; giants of our species, towering hulks with the strength of a bear. Here is the lowdown on the mightiest men in history.

John Middleton

The Childe of Hale is perhaps the tallest man in this list. The conservative estimate is that he stood at 7 ft 9 in (2.36 m) although contemporary accounts measured him at a towering 9 ft 3 in (2.82 m), and that is the height marked on his gravestone. Middleton was so giant that he slept with his feet hanging out of the window of his cottage in Hale near Liverpool, England.

He lived from 1578-1623 and worked for the Sheriff of Lancashire as his personal bodyguard. One can only imagine how intimidating it would have been for anyone who had quarrels with the Sheriff to be confronted by his enormous frame. In 1617, King James I visited the Sheriff and, naturally, the Sheriff wanted to show off his bodyguard. The King was so impressed he invited the two men to his court. There, Middleton wrestled the King’s Champion who must’ve been a formidable man in his own right but Middleton defeated him, breaking the champion’s thumb in the process. The King, wowed by Middleton’s strength, awarded him the large sum of £20. 

Middleton’s companions were jealous of his newly found wealth and on their way home, despite his size and strength, they swindled him out of his money. Middleton thus lived out his final three years impoverished.

Mills Darden 

Darden was an American who lived from 1799-1857. Darden was not just very tall, growing to 7 ft 6 in (2.29 m) high, he is perhaps the largest man to ever walk the earth, weighing at his maximum 1,100 lb (498 kg) – that’s twice as heavy as Andre the Giant! 

Despite the weight he carried around with him, Darden lived the energetic, hard-working life of a farm-worker until his late 30s and exhibited great feats of strength. It is said he could lead a full-grown ox with his bare hands and could single-handedly pull a loaded wagon from a mud hole whereas normal-sized men couldn’t even budge it. His coat required 13.5 yards of cloth to make that three normal men could fit into. His typical breakfast consisted of a dozen eggs, 30 buttered biscuits, a gallon of water and two quarts of coffee. Darden’s weight eventually caught up with him and he perished at 57 years old due to strangulation from the rolls of fat around his neck. His final resting place was Henderson County, Tennessee.

Angus MacAskill

Dubbed the ‘Cape Breton Giant,’ MacAskill reached the humongous height of 7 ft 9 in (2.36 m), despite being unencumbered by gigantism – the condition which causes excessive bone growth that most very tall people have but the body struggles to support in mature adulthood. As such, he’s dubbed the largest ever ‘true giant.’ He was Scottish-born in the Outer Hebrides in 1825 and died in Canada 38 years later. The man was not at all big in his childhood until he hit the growth-spurt of all growth-spurts in adolescence.

After the MacAskills emigrated to Nova Scotia, he caught the attention of the famous showman PT Barnum who paired the giant up with the 3 ft 4 in (102 cm) dwarf ‘General Tom Thumb.’ One of their performances was that Thumb would dance on MacAskill’s vast palm before going into his coat pocket. When he wasn’t touring with Barnum’s circus, he worked on schooners and even met Queen Victoria in 1854 who proclaimed him to be “the tallest, stoutest and strongest man to ever enter the palace”. 

Indeed, his exploits of strength were numerous. At 14 years old he punched a man on a dancefloor so hard that he completely knocked the guy out, MacAskill feared he had killed the man and was discovered praying desperately that he would survive, which he did. The mighty man once lifted a 2,800 lb (1,270 kg) anchor to chest height. He could carry barrels weighing over 350 pounds (160 kg) apiece under each arm and was reputedly able to lift 112 pounds (50.8 kg) with two fingers and hold it at arm’s length for ten minutes

^{MacAskill was once said to have set a 40-foot (12.2 m) mast into a schooner alone plus, was able to lift a fully grown horse over a four-foot fence. Despite having low body fat, the muscle mass behind his prodigious strength gave him a weight of 425 lb (193 kg). Finally, the gentle giant returned to Nova Scotia and opened a gristmill and general store. He died peacefully of ‘brain-fever’ in 1863.}

Daniel Lambert

This behemoth of a man achieved celebrity status in his day as the biggest man to have ever existed. Lambert was an Englishman from Leicester who lived from 1770 to 1809. He grew into adulthood as a keen sportsman, swimming instructor, hunter, horse rider and developed an expertise in breeding animals, especially dogs. Although not especially tall, at 5 ft 11 in (1.68 m) he had reached 450 lb; (200 kg) by the age of 23, despite being known to not drink nor eat particularly large amounts of food. Lambert worked to combat his growing weight-gain by working out. Subsequently he became very strong and could easily carry five long hundredweight (560 lb / 250 kg) and once fought off a dancing-bear that was attacking his dog. Lambert could also stay afloat while supporting two men on his back. 

By the 19th Century, Lambert had lost his job as a Gaol-keeper and he became a virtual recluse because he was sensitive about his weight. Six normal men could now fit into his waistcoat, having grown to 700 lb / 320 kg (or 50 stone in British). Yet, his fame and frame were spreading so the man saw the opportunity to generate some cashflow by charging people to gawp at him. It became fashionable for London’s high society to visit Lambert and he became respected for his intelligence and knowledge of animal breeding. Lambert became such a visitor attraction that he lived out his final few years a wealthy man.

Louis Cyr

Although not a huge man, Cyr was imbued with an incredible amount of natural power. Modern ‘World’s Strongest Man’ competitors achieve great feats of strength only after incredibly intense conditioning. For Louis Cyr, however, he was pretty much born with it, despite being just 1.74 m (5 ft 9 in) tall and weighing in at ‘just’ 154 kg (340 lb).

Born in 1863, Louis began working in a lumber camp at 12 years old and impressed the grown men around him with habitual feats of strength. The ‘Canadian Colossus’ made a first ever exhibition of his strength at 18 years old, wowing an audience by lifting a horse clear off the ground. Fours years later Louis entered his first strongman competition, facing off against Canada’s strongest man at the time, David Michaud. There, Cyr outlifted Michaud by raising a 218 lb (99 kg) barbell with one hand before bearing an incredible 2,371 pounds (1.1 ton) on his back to win the title of the strongest man in the country. Cyr continued to astound the world with his marvellous strength. One might guess that Louis’ feats have been embellished by time and promotional flair but a number of his feats were documented and witnessed by crowds for veracity. These included lifting a 500 lb weight with his finger and pushing a freight car up an incline. One of Cyr’s most-talked about stunts occurred on October 12, 1891, in Montreal. On that occasion he restrained four horses – two pulling in each direction. Perhaps his greatest feat occurred in 1895, when he was reported to have lifted 18 stout men on his back, 4,337 pounds – just shy of two metric tons!

Strongman competitions didn’t pay the bills, so, in between being a vagabond strongman competitor Louis gained employment with the police after breaking up a knife fight then carrying the two foes to a police station. With some cash accrued, Cyr opened up a tavern with an adjoining gym in Montreal. Overeating and inactivity took its toll in Louis’ later years and he succumbed to acute kidney inflammation in 1912. With a number of his feats unbeaten to this day, Cyr is regarded as the strongest man to have ever lived.

Édouard Beaupré

Another French-Canadian, Beaupre lived from 1881 to 1904 as the first of 20 siblings. Edouard was 6 ft already by nine years old; by 17 he had reached 7 ft 3 in, and at his passing he had grown to the enormous height of 8 ft 3 in (2.52 m), weighing in at 370 lbs (170 kg).

During his short adult life, Edouard toured as a wrestler and strongman. The ‘Willow Bunch Giant’ had the brawn to match his stature (plus the brains to speak five languages), wowing audiences by bending iron bars and hoisting horses upon his shoulders. He once managed to lift a 900-lb (408 kg) weight but fractured a leg in the process, and so never attempted the feat again. When Beaupre was 20 years old, he took on the ‘Canadian Colossus’ (see above) in a wrestling match, yet was easily beaten by a man 2 ft 4 in shorter but equal in weight. Beaupre was touring with the Barnum & Bailey Circus when he sadly died of a pulmonary haemorrhage in St Louis at just 24 years old.

Antonine Barada

It’s hard to separate myth from reality with Antonine (or Antoine) Barada, but the man was a Nebraskan folk hero said to be both very tall and strong, “the strongest man to have ever roamed the shores of the Missouri River.” Barada was born in 1807 to French-Native American parentage and was said to have been kidnapped by Lakota Indians for six months when he was a small boy. In adult life Barada married before getting a land allotment he was entitled to as a half Native American, and with that land he built a trading post around which the town of Barada sprouted.

This legendary man is known for many feats, many of which have been dismissed as fakelore by historians. Barada was nevertheless a mighty man, standing at almost seven feet (2.1 m) He would always be called upon to help out with strenuous tasks such as barn raising, where he would single-handedly hold heavy beams in place while they were fastened down, and helping farmers to load hogs for market. Rather than use a loading chute, Barada simply picked the hogs up and set them in the wagon. One famous occasion in St Louis, Barada was challenged to prove his strength. He lifted a stone weighing 1,700 pounds (771 kg), after which point the date of the feat and the weight were inscribed on the stone for future generations. Barada lived 77 years before passing away.