Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Happy Friday! In honor of Friday (or as we like to call it, FriYAY!), the ec team thought we'd get things started right. . . with some of the strangest stories we could find in this week's news. Ready?!

It's a record! 

When Phyo Min Min Soe, 26, gave birth to her daughter Le Yati Min she asked the nurses if she was born complete with all her fingers and toes."They replied that the baby even has more than she needs," she says. That's because Le Yati Min was born with 12 fingers and 14 toes! (Yes, you read that correctly.) The little girl is now 16-months-old, and the family, who lives in Myamar, is seeking a Guinness World Record. According to the Guinness World Records website, the record for most fingers and toes for a living person is currently held by two people in India, who have 12 fingers and 13 toes each. Le lives with her family in a small wooden house on the outskirts of the Southeast Asian country's former capital of Yangon, where she runs around with seven toes on each foot. To learn more about polydactylism (being born with extra digits), go here. To read the original version of this story, go here.

Real-life Survivor

Henry Morello, 84, may never appear on "Survivor," but he's a survivor just the same. The 84-year-old was driving home from a restaurant in the Phoenix area last week when he realized he had made a wrong turn. So he made a U-turn and ended up with his car stuck in a ditch near Interstate 17 in the Arizona desert for five days. His car and cell phone batteries soon went dead. Morello couldn't get out and had to figure out how to survive, so he drank windshield wiper fluid when he got thirsty, used his car mats to stay warm—and read the car manual from cover to cover to pass the time. A group of hikers found Morello last Saturday morning, 5 days after his ordeal began. Doctors  said he arrived in good condition considering what he had been through. Morello will remain there for a few days while he is treated for kidney damage. Morello lives on his own, but a caregiver visits each day. His family and friends said he won't be driving on his own for a long time. Read all about it here.

No more headaches!

We'll end with the tale of a man from China who had been suffering from severe headaches, but won't be anymore. That's because doctors discovered the cause: a rusty, 4-inch knife blade that had been stuck in his skull for four years. A little back story: 4 years ago, Li Fuyan, 30, had been stabbed in the lower right jaw by a robber four years ago and the blade broke off inside his head without anyone realizing it. Surgeons successfully removed the blade this week. Read the whole story here.

As always, if today's dose of strange stories isn't enough for you, check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec. Subscribe to ec here.