Jim Porter (giant)
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Jim Porter (giant)
James D. Porter, known as "Big Jim" Porter (December 15, 1811 – April 25, 1859) was an American tavern keeper and coach driver. in the mid-nineteenth century and internationally famous as the tallest man in the country. Porter stood 7 feet 8 inches tall, weighed 300 pounds, had hands 13 inches long from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger and feet that were 14 ½ inches long.  Upon meeting him, Charles Dickens wrote in his 1842 travelogue ''American Notes and Pictures of Italy'' that Porter walked in a crowd as a lighthouse among lampposts. Louisville area doctors gathered in 2006 to review Porter's medical profile. Their conclusion suggests that Porter had a hormone disorder called acromegaly, which affects about three out of every one million people. Acromegaly or gigantism results from a tumor (usually benign) pressing on the pituitary gland releasing an excessive amount of growth hormones.   Early life Born James D. Porter on December 15, 1811 in Portsmouth, ...
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University Press Of Kentucky
The University Press of Kentucky (UPK) is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and was organized in 1969 as successor to the University of Kentucky Press. The university had sponsored scholarly publication since 1943. In 1949, the press was established as a separate academic agency under the university president, and the following year Bruce F. Denbo, then of Louisiana State University Press, was appointed as the first full-time professional director. Denbo served as director of UPK until his retirement in 1978, building a small but distinguished list of scholarly books with emphasis on American history and literary criticism. Since its reorganization, the Press has represented a consortium that now includes all of Kentucky's state universities, seven of its private colleges, and two historical societies. UPK joined the Association of University Presses in 1947. The press is supported by the Thomas D. Clark Foundation, a private nonprofit foundation establis ...
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Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by population, 57th-largest city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's List of United States cities by area, 28th-largest city. The city is also known as "Horse Capital of the World". It is within the state's Bluegrass region. Notable locations in the city include the Kentucky Horse Park, The Red Mile and Keeneland race courses, Rupp Arena, Central Bank Center, Transylvania University, the University of Kentucky, and Bluegrass Community and Technical College. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census the population was 322,570, anchoring a Lexington-Fayette, KY Metropolitan Statistical Area, metropolitan area of 516,811 people and a Lexington-Fayette-Frankfort-Richmond, KY Combined Statistical Area, combined statistical ar ...
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Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for other social ...
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Acromegaly
Acromegaly is a disorder that results from excess growth hormone (GH) after the growth plates have closed. The initial symptom is typically enlargement of the hands and feet. There may also be an enlargement of the forehead, jaw, and nose. Other symptoms may include joint pain, thicker skin, deepening of the voice, headaches, and problems with vision. Complications of the disease may include type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, and high blood pressure. Acromegaly is usually caused by the pituitary gland producing excess growth hormone. In more than 95% of cases the excess production is due to a benign tumor, known as a pituitary adenoma. The condition is not inherited from a person's parents. Acromegaly is rarely due to a tumor in another part of the body. Diagnosis is by measuring growth hormone after a person has consumed a glucose solution, or by measuring insulin-like growth factor I in the blood. After diagnosis, medical imaging of the pituitary is carried out to determine if an ...
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Gigantism
Gigantism ( el, γίγας, ''gígas'', "giant", plural γίγαντες, ''gígantes''), also known as giantism, is a condition characterized by excessive growth and height significantly above average. In humans, this condition is caused by over-production of growth hormone in childhood, resulting in people up to in height. It is a rare disorder resulting from increased levels of growth hormone before the fusion of the growth plate which usually occurs at some point soon after puberty. This increase is most often due to abnormal tumor growths on the pituitary gland. Gigantism should not be confused with acromegaly, the adult form of the disorder, characterized by somatic enlargement specifically in the extremities and face. Cause Gigantism is characterized by an excess of growth hormone (GH). The excess of growth hormone that brings about gigantism is virtually always caused by pituitary growths (adenomas). These adenomas are on the anterior pituitary gland. They can also ca ...
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Portsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth is a city in and the county seat of Scioto County, Ohio, United States. Located in southern Ohio south of Chillicothe, it lies on the north bank of the Ohio River, across from Kentucky, just east of the mouth of the Scioto River. The population was 20,226 at the 2010 census. Portsmouth also stands as the state's 88th most populated city. History Foundation The area was occupied by Native Americans as early as 100 BC, as indicated by the Portsmouth Earthworks, a ceremonial center built by the Ohio Hopewell culture between 100 and 500 AD. According to early 20th-century historian Charles Augustus Hanna, a Shawnee village was founded at the site of modern-day Portsmouth in late 1758, following the destruction of Lower Shawneetown by floods. European-Americans began to settle in the 1790s after the American Revolutionary War, and the small town of Alexandria was founded. Located at the confluence, Alexandria was flooded numerous times by the Ohio and the Scioto r ...
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Shippingport, Kentucky
Shippingport, Kentucky is an industrial site and one of the six formerly independent settlements at the Falls of the Ohio in what is now Louisville, Kentucky. It was located on a peninsula on the south bank of the Ohio River, and incorporated without a name on October 10, 1785. It was later named Campbell Town after Revolutionary War soldier and settler John Campbell. He had been granted the land for his earlier service in the French & Indian War. In 1803 the settlement was sold to a Philadelphia-based partnership and renamed Shippingport. Two Tarascon brothers became leaders of the French business community at the Falls, building a large warehouse, a 1200-foot rope walk, and a six-story water-powered flour mill at the site by 1819. Numerous French families settled in the area, making it a center of French culture for a time. Some of the French settlers came from Kaskaskia, Illinois, and other areas of French settlement along the Mississippi River after the United States complet ...
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Gulliver's Travels
''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote ''Gulliver's Travels'' "to vex the world rather than divert it". The book was an immediate success. The English dramatist John Gay remarked: "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." In 2015, Robert McCrum released his selection list of 100 best novels of all time in which ''Gulliver's Travels'' is listed in third place as "a satirical masterpiece". Plot Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput The travel begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. ;4 May ...
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Louisville And Portland Canal
The Louisville and Portland Canal was a canal bypassing the Falls of the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky. The Falls form the only barrier to navigation between the origin of the Ohio at Pittsburgh and the port of New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico; circumventing them was long a goal for Pennsylvanian and Cincinnatian merchants.Yater, George. ''The Encyclopedia of Louisville''p. 531 "Louisville and Portland Canal". University Press of Kentucky (Lexington), 2001. Accessed 9 October 2013. The canal opened in 1830 as the private Louisville and Portland Canal Company but was gradually bought out during the 19th century by the federal government, which had invested heavily in its construction, maintenance, and improvement. The Louisville and Portland Canal was renamed as the McAlpine Locks and Dam in 1962 after extensive modernization. The name "Louisville and Portland Canal" (or simply "Portland Canal") is still used to refer to the canal itself, which runs between the Kentucky bank ...
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Cave Hill Cemetery
Cave Hill Cemetery is a Victorian era National Cemetery and arboretum located at Louisville, Kentucky. Its main entrance is on Baxter Avenue and there is a secondary one on Grinstead Drive. It is the largest cemetery by area and number of burials in Louisville. Cave Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Cave Hill National Cemetery, containing military graves, is also on the National Register, added in 1998. History Cave Hill was chartered in 1848 on what was William Johnston's Cave Hill Farm, then a rural property some distance east of Louisville. Johnston, who died in 1798, had built the first brick house in Louisville on the grounds circa 1788. City officials had purchased part of the land in the 1830s in anticipation of building a railroad through it, and a workhouse was built there. The railroad was built elsewhere, and the land was leased to local farmers. In 1846, Mayor Frederick A. Kaye began investigating the possibility of develop ...
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People With Gigantism
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ...
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1811 Births
Events January–March * January 8 – An unsuccessful slave revolt is led by Charles Deslondes, in St. Charles and St. James Parishes, Louisiana. * January 17 – Mexican War of Independence – Battle of Calderón Bridge: A heavily outnumbered Spanish force of 6,000 troops defeats nearly 100,000 Mexican revolutionaries. * January 22 – The Casas Revolt begins in San Antonio, Spanish Texas. * February 5 – British Regency: George, Prince of Wales becomes prince regent, because of the perceived insanity of his father, King George III of the United Kingdom. * February 19 – Peninsular War – Battle of the Gebora: An outnumbered French force under Édouard Mortier routs and nearly destroys the Spanish, near Badajoz, Spain. * March 1 – Citadel Massacre in Cairo: Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali kills the last Mamluk leaders. * March 5 – Peninsular War – Battle of Barrosa: A French attack fails, on a larger Anglo-Portuguese-Sp ...
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