From a 3’7″ major league baseball player to twin Munchkins from The Wizard Of Oz, the world’s shortest people left an unforgettable mark on history.
Globally, the average man stands between 5 feet, 3 inches tall and 6 feet, 0.4 inches tall. Women usually stand between 4 feet, 11 inches tall and 5 feet, 7 inches tall. But what about the people who don’t?
People who stand above or below those ranges have always captured the attention of the public, whether they’re the tallest man to ever live or the shortest living woman. There have been many remarkably small people throughout history. However, many of the shortest people in the world haven’t been properly recorded or recognized until more recently.
Let’s take a look at some of the verified cases of history’s smallest people. From the shortest adult person ever recorded to the littlest married couple, here are the stories of 10 of the shortest people in the world.
The Shortest Man Ever: Chandra Bahadur Dangi
Wikimedia CommonsChandra Bahadur Dangi is the shortest man ever recorded.
Standing just 1 foot, 9.5 inches tall, Chandra Bahadur Dangi holds the record for the shortest adult person to ever live. Born on Nov. 30, 1939, in the village of Reemkholi in Nepal, Dangi lived rather privately for most of his life.
Until he was publicly declared the shortest man on Earth, Dangi didn’t leave his home village. He worked as a weaver and a farmer — much like the others in his small agricultural community — to help support his family.
He never got married. Instead, he lived with one of his brothers and some other relatives. Though some of his seven siblings were also short (and others were of average height), Dangi was clearly the shortest of them all.
Guinness World RecordsChandra Bahadur Dangi was a primordial dwarf, and he lived remarkably long considering his condition.
Dangi was a local curiosity in his small village, not garnering much outside publicity due to how remote the village was. That all changed when a forest contractor noticed the man and told local news outlets about Dangi.
This attracted the attention of Guinness World Records, and in 2012, the organization came out to Kathmandu to independently measure Dangi and verify that he was, in fact, the shortest man to ever live. At 72 years old, Dangi quickly began to gain international fame for his record-breaking height.
Wikimedia CommonsUnfortunately, Chandra Bahadur Dangi died just three years after setting his record.
Dangi also finally got to fulfill his lifelong dream of traveling the world, eventually visiting the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and the United States. However, Dangi died just three years later at the age of 75.
At the time, he was touring in American Samoa when he developed pneumonia and succumbed to the infection in Pago Pago on Sept. 3, 2015.
