The top half of this image is a chart of the heights of students at a college in 1914. The bottom half shows the heights at the same college in 1997. It seems we're growing.
It's no secret that humans have been getting taller. Hormones in meat, better nutrition, ever decreasing fear of the tallest human in a crowd being snatched up into the air by pterodactyls — whatever the cause, we can measure the effect.
Above are two living histograms (or bar graphs) of the students at Connecticut State Agricultural College. A quick glance will show that the single largest group of students has dropped a couple of inches, from 5' 8'' to 5'6'', but that's because of the addition of women (who presumably don't always wear white), to the student body. The average height of men at the college has shifted up roughly three inches in eighty years. In science fiction stories, large body changes in the general population take genetic or technological intervention. It's interesting to get a reminder than just regular life can change the world profoundly in less than a century. For more stats and graphs, go to Journal of Heredity website.