Tallest Man In The United States Is A 7-foot-8 Virgina Brother With A Big ... Personality
NORFOLK, Va. - To all those people who blurt out "Wow, you're tall!" as they stare up at George Bell: He knows. And now, the world will know, too. The lanky, 7-foot-8 Norfolk sheriff's deputy was recognized Thursday by Guinness World Records as the Tallest Man in the United States.
That makes him 2 inches taller than the NBA's current tallest player, Yao Ming, but too short to be the world's tallest living man. He stands below, according to Guinness, Ukraine's 8-foot-5.5 Leonid Stadnyk and China's Bao Xi Shun, who is 7 feet 8.95 inches.
To answer the inevitable questions:
Bell wears size-19 shoes, pants with a 43-inch inseam and shirts with 45-inch sleeves. He did play basketball, in college and with the Harlem Wizards and Harlem Globetrotters show teams. He Bell hit 5-foot-4 at age 9. In middle school, he topped 6 feet. By the end of high school, he was 7-foot-6. He played basketball until, at 30, he lost interest in the sport and switched to law enforcement.