World's Shortest Man

Edward Nino Hernandez of Bogota, Colombia has been named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. The 24-year-old Hernandez is 27 inches (70 cm) tall and weighs only 22 pounds. The previous record holder was He Pingping of China, who was slightly taller than Hernandez and died last March. Hernandez is currently working as a actor in a Colombian film in which he plays a "drug thug."

Doctors never could explain why Nino is so small, his parents say.

"They never gave us a diagnosis," his mother, Noemi Hernandez, said during an interview in the family's sparely furnished apartment in Bosa, a mostly poor district of southern Bogota.

Hernandez, 43, said Nino weighed just 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilograms) at birth and was 15 inches (38 centimeters) long.

She said doctors at the National University studied him until he was 3, then lost interest. She and her husband, a security guard, lost a daughter who was similarly small in 1992 when she was about to complete a year of life.

The couple's youngest child, 11-year-old Miguel Angel, stands 37 inches (93 centimeters) tall and has facial features similar to Nino. The other three boys are of normal height and appearance.

"I feel happy because I'm unique," Nino said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

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