A small amount of water and a piece of an Alka-Seltzer tablet are placed in a plastic film canister. The lid is quickly snapped on and the canister turned upside down. Within a few seconds the canister explodes with a loud pop, sending the bottom of the canister flying through the air.
At just under 25 inches tall, Jyoti Amge of Nagpur, India, is the world's shortest woman. She's a college-bound student, with dreams of making it as an actress. Still, she weighs just 12 pounds -- only nine pounds more than she did at birth. Even among dwarfs, Amge is tiny.
A few miles away lives the woman with the world's longest legs. As the Washington Post noted on Monday, the Guinness record-holder for women's longest legs is a Falls Church basketball coach. Svetlana Pankratova's legs are, according to Guinness, almost 4 feet, 4 inches long. (At 6 feet, 5 inches tall, she's not the world's tallest woman, however; the woman certified as Guinness' tallest living woman, 7-feet-7-inch tall Yao Defen, died in November.)