FRIDAY SNIPPETS AND SOUNDBITES

• When you’re in middle school, it seems like all the girls are taller than the boys. I know I was! At least our proportions are not as out-of-the-ordinary as Chinese man He Pingping and Russian woman Svetlana Pankratova. He is the shortest man in the world (2 feet 5.37 inches tall!) and Pankratova has the longest legs of any woman in the world (more than 4 feet long – she’s a total of 6 feet 4 inches tall). Check out the pictures taken of them to advertise the release of the 2009 edition of Guinness World Records. 

• An elderly Muslim man from Nigeria has more wives than years of life. He is 84 and has 86 wives … and 170 children. Men of the Islamic faith are usually restricted to no more than 4 wives, but Mohammed Bello Abubakar has somehow gotten around that so far. He has a reputation for being a healer and says the women come to him. None of them work, and he won’t reveal how he gets the money to feed and clothe everyone. Read more of this disturbing story here.

• Public bathrooms are the worst, but we all need to use them sometimes. One man in Michigan found a particularly disgusting public bathroom – and cleaned it. He then billed the city $156.94 for the work he did. He’s not going to get reimbursed, but city officials did honor his work with the Golden Plunger Award. This story is cited here.