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I was browsing Minneapolis Star microfilm from July 1936 and spotted an eye-popping front page featuring a "life-size" photo of "the largest baby ever born alive" in Minnesota. The Minneapolis Star covered the story intensely for several days, reporting on almost every angle of the unusual birth, the mother and father, their farm and Jacob's dozen siblings. Here's one:
Graceville, Minn. – Baby Boy Schmitz, weight at birth 15 pounds, 15.2 ounces, height 24½ inches, head 16 inches, chest 17 inches, across shoulders 8 inches, July 16, 1936, Western Minnesota hospital. In such laconic scientific terms, without a word about Mrs. Veronica Schmitz, the mother, medicine records the birth of the largest baby ever born alive in Minnesota.
