Väinö Myllyrinne, (1909, Helsinki - 1963, Järvenpää, Finland) was an acromegalic giant who was at one time the world's tallest person. He stood 222 cm (7 feet 3.5 inches) and weighed 197 kg (31 stone) at the age of 21, but experienced a second phase of growth in his late thirties, attaining a height of 247 cm (8 feet 1¼ inches).
Myllyrinne is considered the tallest soldier ever, having served in the Finnish Defence Forces. He was also voted 12th greatest Finn in the tv-show Suuret suomalaiset (a copy of the BBC show Great Britons), largely due to a tongue-in-cheek Internet campaign criticising the idea of the show. The advocates of the campaign thought that because you can't pick just one person to be the Greatest Finn for their accomplisments, Väinö Myllyrinne would actually be the "biggest Finn" because of his height (in Finnish, the word suuri means both "big" and "great").
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