Nevertheless, Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was 150 cm (4 ft 11 in) and several prominent world leaders of the 20th century, such as Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Joseph Stalin were of below-average height. These examples, however, were all before modern forms of multi-media, i.e., television, which may further height discrimination in modern society. Further, growing evidence suggests that height may be a proxy for confidence, which is likewise strongly correlated with occupational success. Sports
History of human height
In the 150 years since the mid-nineteenth century, the average human height in industrialised countries has increased by up to 10 centimetres (3.9 in). However, these increases appear to have largely levelled off. Before the mid-nineteenth century, there were cycles in height, with periods of increase and decrease; however, apart from the decline associated with the transition to agriculture, examinations of skeletons show no significant differences in height from the neolithic revolution through the early-1800s.In general, there were no significant differences in regional height levels throughout the nineteenth century. The only exceptions of this rather uniform height distribution were people in the Anglo-Saxon settlement regions who were taller than the average and people from Southeast Asia with below-average heights. However, at the end of the nineteenth century and in the middle of the first globalization period, heights between rich and poor countries began to diverge. These differences did not disappear in the deglobalization period of the two World wars.
In theory it should be easiest to deduce the origin of recently gained introns due to the lack of host-induced mutations, yet even introns gained recently did not arise from any of the aforementioned mechanisms. These findings thus raise the question of whether or not the proposed mechanisms of intron gain fail to describe the mechanistic origin of many novel introns because they are not accurate mechanisms of intron gain, or if there are other, yet to be discovered, processes generating novel introns.In intron transposition, the most commonly purported intron gain mechanism, a spliced intron is thought to reverse splice into either its own mRNA or another mRNA at a previously intron-less position. This intron-containing mRNA is then reverse transcribed and the resulting intron-containing cDNA may then cause intron gain via complete or partial recombination with its original genomic locus. Transposon insertions can also result in intron creation. Such an insertion could intronize the transposon without disrupting the coding sequence when a transposon inserts into the sequence AGGT, resulting in the duplication of this sequence on each side of the transposon. It is not yet understood why these elements are spliced, whether by chance, or by some preferential action by the transposon. In tandem genomic duplication, due to the similarity between consensus donor and acceptor splice sites, which both closely resemble AGGT, the tandem genomic duplication of an exonic segment harboring an AGGT sequence generates two potential splice sites.