WORLD'S SHORTEST WOMAN

Jyoti Amge (born December 16, 1993), a resident of Nagpur, India, is the world's smallest living woman according to the Limca Book of Records and Guinness Book of Records.

A documentary featuring Amge was broadcast in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 on June 11, 2009 at 21:00 called BodyShock: Two Foot High Teen.

She was a guest participant at Bigg Boss 6 - a winner-take-all television show in India where participants are required to live together in a large house engaging in a variety of 'tasks' as part of the game-show.

As of December 16, 2011, on her 18th birthday, Guinness World Records representatives measured Jyoti Amge at 62.8 centimetres (24.7 inches) tall, making her 2.76 inches (seven centimetres) shorter than Bridgette Jordan, the 22-year-old American who had held the title since September 2008. She has been officially declared the world's smallest woman by Guinness Book of Records with a height of 62.8 centimetres (24.7 inches). Her restricted height is due to a growth anomaly called achondroplasia.

In 2012, she met the world’s shortest man, Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal. The pair posed together for the 57th edition of the Guinness World Records 2013.

WORLD'S LARGEST HUMAN GATHERING

An estimated 30 million people visited the Maha Kumbh Mela on 10 February 2013 and an estimated 100 million are expected to visit the place during the festival spread over 55 days. Both (in a single day and over a specific period) are the largest peaceful human assemblies in the world. According to estimates, around 70 million people participated in the 45-day Ardh Kumbh Mela at Prayag in 2007. The Purna Kumbh Mela held in 2001 in Prayag was estimated to have attracted between 30 and 70 million people.

The Maha Kumbh Mela, or Grand Pitcher Festival, takes place every 12 years in Northern India and sees millions of devotees bathe in the Ganges to purify their sins. The Kumbh is held at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, where Hindu scriptures say the gods spilt a drop of the elixir of immortality.

Kumbh Mela takes place every twelve years at one of four places: Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik. The Mela in its different forms alternates between Prayag, Nashik, Ujjain and Haridwar every third year. The Ardh (half) Kumbh Mela is celebrated every six years at only two places, Haridwar and Prayag.

    Kumbha Mela: Held at all four places.
    Ardha Kumbha Mela: Held at Haridwar and Prayag, every 6 years.
    Purna Kumbha Mela: Held only at Prayag every 12 years.
    Maha Kumbha Mela: Held only at Prayag, every 144 years.

WORLD'S LARGEST DRUM ENSEMBLE

Meghalaya Tourism Development Forum (MTDF) organised the largest drum ensemble with 7,951 drums playing simultaneously at Jawaharlal Nehru Open Stadium, Shillong on Oct 28, 2006. The music piece titled 'Positive Vibrations'was an opening act for the Autumn Festival (Oct 28-Nov 5, 2006) at Shillong, capital of Meghalaya and lasted for 10 minutes.
Thus the city had entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest drum ensemble. From schoolchildren to professionals, all available types drummers from across the northeast were mobilized to perform in the event. The drummers, mostly tribes people, schoolchildren and members of the police, performed the orchestrated piece called ‘Positive Vibrations’ composed by a local musician, Rudy Wallang.

Meghalaya’s Tourism Minister R G Lyngdoh said: “This is a historic moment for us. People across the world would now know that Meghalaya is a vibrant place and a tourist destination.” Mr. Lyngdoh played an important part in organising the record breaking performance.

“The 7,951 drummers have created a new Guinness world record with their scintillating performance Saturday,” Michael Sean Whitty, an adjudicator from the Guinness Book of World Records, said on Sunday. Some 25,000 people chanted “hoi kiw, hoi kiw”, a local victory cry as Whitty announced the creation of the new world record, handing organisers a certificate to confirm the achievement. In the absence of any permanent adjudicator, Whitty had to fly here from Britain to oversee the world’s largest drum ensemble. Whitty added that a growing number of entries from India making it to the Guinness Book of World Records, its officials are contemplating the appointment of a permanent adjudicator for the country. “We have one in China. We are now thinking of one for India,” he said.

The previous Guiness world record for "largest drum ensemble" was set in 2004 by Grammy award winner Mickey Hart who assembled 4,374 drummers at the Global Festival for Peace in Laytonville, California.

MOST DISHES ON DISPLAY

The largest display of different types of dishes was held at Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu on March 3, 2007. Marking the year 2007 celebrations, Sree Parshwa Padmavathi Seva Trust of India inspired by His Holliness Sri Vasantha Kumar Keval Chand has organised this spectacular event. There were 2007 dishes(in reference to the year), prepared by 500 cooks assisted by 100 others. The preparation started at 7.00 a.m on march 2, 2007 and finished at 6.45 a.m. on the next day. Significantly, all the dishes were vegetarian. All sweets were made in pure ghee and without egg.

The significance of this event is celebrating the Holi festival in India. Holi is the most colourful festival of the Hindus and falls on the Full moon day in the month of March. It is an ancient festival of myriad colours, of gaiety, of friendships and re-unions all over the country. It is celebrated very grandly with colours, offering of sweets and praying for peace, happiness and prosperity.

MOST HOT CHILLIES EATEN

Anandita Dutta Tamuly from Titabor village, 325 km east of Guwahati, Assam, India, has a pecuiliar fiery habit - gobbling red-hot chillies without batting an eyelid or shedding a tear.

She is like any other woman of her age - except for her preference for the local chilli variety called the Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia (Capsicum frutescens). She can easily chew down 60 of the fiery peppers in two minutes. She can even break the chilli and splash it on her eyes without any apparent discomfort. She gave a stunning performance of her abilities in a TV show named "Shabaash India".

The Naga Jolokia is claimed by scientists and also recognised by the Guiness book of records as the world's fieriest. The hotness of the Naga Jolokia chilli, measured in Scoville units, was 1,001,304 units compared to the Mexican chilli's 577 units, they said. Tamuly hails from the state of Assam, where the pepper occurs as a natural hybrid. The local variety of the chilli is grown mostly in the hilly terrain and is considered a staple menu in every meal among the northeastern people.

'I have been eating Naga Jolokia since my childhood and never realised the hotness in my mouth,' she said.

She started munching chillies when she was just five years old. 'I had a sore tongue and my mother applied chilli paste to cure the infection when I was five years old. Since then I developed a penchant for chillis,' Tamuly said.

Tamuly claims her chilli eating habit has had no adverse effect on her health.

MEMORISING MOST PLACES OF e

The mathematical constant e is one of the most important numbers in mathematics, along with the constant π(pi), and the imaginary unit i. The mathematical constant e is the unique real number such that the function e to the power of x has the same value as the slope of the tangent line, for all values of x. The number e is sometimes called Euler's number after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler.

Since e is transcendental, and therefore irrational, its value cannot be given exactly as a finite or eventually repeating decimal. The numerical value of e truncated to 20 decimal places is:

2.71828 18284 59045 23536...

Bhaskar Karmakar of India created world record by reciting e to an astonishing 5,002 decimal places. He performed his world record breaking feat on 25 November 2007, taking a time of just 1 hour 29 minutes 52 seconds. He also recited the value backwards to 5002 decimal places in 1 hr 48 min 45 seconds.

WORLD'S LARGEST WEDDING BANQUET

The world's largest ever wedding banquet was hosted and paid for by Jayalalitha Jayaram, a movie star and former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, India. The luncheon was attended by over 150,000 guests at the wedding of her foster son, V.N.Sudhakaran to N.Sathyalakshmi. The banquet was served by the coast in the state capital, Chennai, on 7 Sept 1995.
Jayalalithaa’s detractors draw attention to the wedding of her adopted son as an example of her extravagant show of wealth. Guinness Book of Records certifies the ensuing wedding banquet as the largest ever. TIME magazine, and many other newspapers in India observed that the ceremony was “a vulgar display of wealth”.
The politician, Jayalalitha Jayaram, is a former movie star who succeeded her companion, a still bigger star named M. G. Ramachandran, after he died as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu State.
She has set new benchmarks for outlandishness in a country that has never lacked color in its politicians, building a personality cult and, her opponents say, a vast personal wealth.
That many in Tamil Nadu disagree was evident from the turnout for the wedding, which drew more than 150,000 people, many of them Jayalalitha supporters who were bused in from villages all across the state, some journeying a dozen or more hours. In a state where the per capita income is less than $400 a year, and 40 per cent of the population is illiterate, some of the poorest of the wedding guests seemed to be the least concerned about its cost.

FIRST MAN ON WORLD'S HIGHEST PEAK

Sherpa Tenzing Norgay of Darjeeling, India, along with Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand became the first human being to set foot on the coveted peak of Mount Everest (8843.4 metres or 29029 feet), the highest peak on earth.

No one knew if the top of Everest could ever be reached until May 29, 1953 when Tenzing and Hillary plodded their way to the summit from their high camp at 28,000 feet. It was the ninth British expedition for Mount Everest, led by John Hunt. This was the expedition's camp #9, 1,000 feet from the summit and situated some 2,000 feet higher than today's highest camp for climbers on the same route. Today, climbers set up only 4 camps on the mountain, because Base Camp is positioned much higher than it was in the early days.

Over a period of nearly twenty years, he had made himself a part of every expedition that set out to put a man on the top of Mt. Everest. He had climbed as a lowly porter and as a respected member of the climbing team. He had accompanied large, confident armies (such as the 1936 and 1953 British Everest Expeditions) on their way to the summit, but he had also gone to the mountain with a solitary climber, Earl Denman, in 1947, on the chance that even this might give him an opportunity to get to the top. By 1953, he had probably spent more time on Mt. Everest than any other human being - and had come closer to its summit. Only months before his successful climb with Edmund Hillary, he and Raymond Lambert of the 1952 Swiss expedition, had come within 1,000 feet of the summit -- the highest point that anyone had reached until then. Unlike most of his fellow Sherpas of the time for whom, by and large, climbing was just a challenging way of making a living, Tenzing desperately wanted to get to the summit of Mt. Everest and devoted most of his life to this goal. "For in my heart," he once said, "I needed to go . . . the pull of Everest was stronger for me than any force on earth."

Tenzing's victory over mount Everest was also a symbolic recognisation for the emerging identity a country which has acquired freedom just a few years back after centuries of domination by foreign rulers.

WORLD'S LARGEST VEGETARIAN POPULATION

About 20% Indians are strict vegetarians. With a population of more than 120 crore (12 billion) the vegetarian population is more than 24 crore (2.4 billion), largest in the world. There are 744 vegetarian communities comprising 16% of the population, prominent among them being, Jains and Vaishnavas. Large parts of population from Southern India, Northern India and Western India are vegetarians.

the staple food of Indians being rice & chapati (made from wheat flour), in a strictly vegetarian diet, the requirement of protein is met by plant sources such as soyabean and other lentils. However body protein intake and assimilation rate is higher if more than one type of plant proteins are eaten together.