History has never had a height requirement, and you might be surprised at the number of people who ended up in record books and government offices, despite being seen as on the short side.
One orbit around Earth
Yuri Gagarin’s height actually worked in his favor. He was around 5’2″, and that meant the cosmonaut fit perfectly inside the very cramped Vostok capsule. That’s why, on April 12, 1961, the 27-year-old pilot was the one who blasted off from Baikonur and became the first human to orbit Earth.
It was a trip that only lasted 108 minutes, barely enough time for a long movie, but it was a huge step forward in human history. Gagarin came back to enormous fame and toured internationally. He helped other cosmonauts train before he died in a plane crash in 1968.
A pair of ruby slippers
You couldn’t tell that Judy Garland was only about 4’11½”. Hollywood made her seem larger than the entire screen. Garland was born Frances Gumm in Minnesota in 1922, and she began performing as a child long before MGM signed her as a teenager. She made movie history when she played Dorothy in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.
Garland went on to appear in numerous movies and won a special juvenile Oscar. Her 1961 Carnegie Hall album picked up five Grammys. It was quite the career, especially for someone that MGM executives once thought looked ‘too ordinary’ for the silver screen.
From Paris streets to world stages
Singer Édith Piaf had a nickname that kind of fit, at least in terms of her height. It was ‘the Little Sparrow.’ She was only 4’10”, but that nickname didn’t really do her incredible voice justice.
Piaf was born in Paris in 1915 and sang in the streets before nightclub owner Louis Leplée spotted her in the 1930s. You probably recognize some of her songs, like ‘La Vie en rose’ and ‘Non, je ne regrette rien.’ She became internationally famous and performed in places like New York. No matter how difficult or messy her life might’ve been, her songs stuck around.
Far beyond Nashville
Dolly Parton is the kind of celebrity who’s able to laugh at herself, and that includes her height. She’s about 5’0″ barefoot. The famous heels add a few inches, of course. Parton was born in 1946 in rural Tennessee as one of 12 children, and she went to Nashville after high school. It didn’t take long for her to become a country music star.
Outside of the music, though, Parton has helped numerous children worldwide through her Imagination Library. It has mailed hundreds of millions of free books to children. She’s just that generous.
The artist of Montmartre
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s height problems started when he was a teenager. He broke both of his thigh bones and ended up around 4’11” because his legs stopped developing normally. The rest of his body continued to grow, however.
He began living and working in Paris as a painter, and he eventually created a poster for the Moulin Rouge in 1891. Toulouse-Lautrec died in 1901 at only 36, leaving behind a collection of paintings and posters that still look unmistakably his.
Fame before movies existed
Charles Stratton was better known as General Tom Thumb, and his height had a big part to play in that. He was around 3’4″ tall as an adult. Showman P. T. Barnum ‘discovered’ Stratton and began presenting him at his New York museum while Stratton was just four years old.
Stratton learned songs and comedy routines. He toured Europe and even appeared before Queen Victoria, he was just that famous. Stratton married another little person, Lavinia Warren, in 1863, and the whole thing became a huge press event in the United States.
A meeting in Reno
Billy Barty spent almost his entire life on screen, from when he was a young child to his most famous role as an adult in Willow. He stood at only 3’9”. Acting was just a single part of his story, though, as he helped improve the lives of little people across America.
He helped organize a gathering of people with dwarfism in Reno, Nevada, in 1957. That meeting eventually led to Little People of America, a national organization working to support little people and educate others about them.
Twenty-six days in San Francisco
Judith Heumann was forced to use a wheelchair after she contracted polio as a young child. She was about 4’8”, and it was because of her short height that New York City initially refused to give her a teaching license. Officials didn’t think she could safely evacuate students in an emergency.
But Heumann decided to sue and eventually became a teacher. She later worked in the Clinton administration and the State Department, as well as for the World Bank. Anytime people were arguing over disability policy, Heumann was there.
The mathematics behind electric power
Charles Proteus Steinmetz wasn’t the kind of guy to let his shortness or spinal problems stop him. No, he was around four feet tall and had a curved spine, but the company General Electric cared a lot more about what he could do with mathematics.
Steinmetz worked out practical mathematical methods for understanding alternating currents and a lot more. His systems were pretty important, especially as electric power systems began expanding. We owe a lot of our electrical understanding to him.
Forty years on Capitol Hill
At 4’11”, Barbara Mikulski was one of the shortest people in the Senate. But she stayed there longer than almost any woman before her. She started out as a social worker before joining the Baltimore city council in 1971. She then entered the House in 1977, and won a Senate seat in 1986.
Mikulski became the first woman to chair the Senate Appropriations Committee. She also supported funding for scientific research, including for things like the Hubble Space Telescope. Mikulski eventually retired in 2017 after spending 40 years in Congress.
A cabinet post in Washington
Robert Reich was born in Pennsylvania in 1946 with a rare genetic condition that affected his bones. He grew no taller than 4’11”. He studied at Dartmouth, Oxford, and Yale, then ended up working in several presidential administrations.
He became Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor in 1993, for one, and his department focused on things like workplace safety and job training. He became a professor and author after government, becoming very recognizable on television. He never let his height hold him back.
Records across three Olympics
Simone Biles certainly doesn’t look short. But she is, as she’s only 4’8″, yet she’s managed to become the most decorated gymnast in history. Biles made her Olympic debut at Rio in 2016 and won four gold medals there.
She then returned for Tokyo in 2021 and Paris in 2024. She had 11 Olympic medals by the end of the Paris Olympics, seven of which were gold. She has around 41 combined Olympic and world medals. Pretty good going, really.
A first at the State Department
Madeleine Albright was notably shorter than a lot of other people she worked with in Washington. She was around 4’10”, after all, but she was still an impressive woman. Albright became the first woman ever to serve as U.S. Secretary of State in 1997.
That was under Clinton’s administration. Before that, she’d been America’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997, and she later spent her State Department years dealing with things like NATO expansion and nuclear issues.
The Little Warrior
‘The Little Warrior’ was probably the best nickname for Willie T. Barrow. She might’ve only been around 4’11”, but she spent decades organizing right in the middle of American civil rights. Barrow worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1953 to 1965.
You know, the group that Martin Luther King Jr. was the president of. She did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, finding transportation and organizing rallies. She also joined the March on Washington and the Selma campaign.
Four Emmys for one role
Peter Dinklage has had to fight for years against acting roles that treated dwarfism as a joke. He’s about 4’5″ and has achondroplasia. Early acting jobs weren’t exactly pouring in, but then The Station Agent arrived in 2003 and gave him a much bigger audience.
He appeared as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones eight years later. Dinklage won four Primetime Emmys for the role, and by his fourth win in 2019, he’d collected more victories in that supporting-drama category than any other actor had at the time.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
10 tallest people in history
You might know some tall people who are around 6 feet, maybe even 7 feet, but there have actually been some people who were pushing 8 feet tall.
