Khagendra Thapa Magar, the world’s smallest teen, is held next to a life-sized figure of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man ever, to mark his introduction into “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” latest book during a photo shoot on Times Square in New York yesterday. The 17-year-old Nepalese made his entry into the record book as the world’s smallest male teen standing just 56cm (22 in) tall
A Nepalese teenager set to be declared the planet’s smallest person got the big star treatment yesterday on a tour of New York.
Crowds at Times Square jostled for a glimpse of Khagendra Thapa Magar who at 17 is the size of a baby and has stopped growing.
The Nepalese teen was making his first visit to New York as part of a publicity trip organised by the freak-show museum Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Wearing a white shirt and doll-sized pin-striped grey jacket, Magar smiled shyly, blinking at rows of cameras and the vast neon billboards lining Times Square.
Ripley’s declares Magar - at 22in (56cm) tall and 11 lb (5kg) - the world’s smallest person.
The Guinness Book of Records on Monday named Colombia’s Nino Hernandez to the title but only because Guinness doesn’t consider Magar an adult - at least not until he turns 18 next month and takes the undisputed mantle of mini-king.
Ripley’s, a chain of museums specialising in oddities and bizarre acts of nature such as a five-legged cow and two-headed sheep, said Magar suffers primordial dwarfism, which typically reduces life expectancy to as little as the 20s.
But his translator, Min Bahadur Rana, said Magar was in many ways a normal teenager.
“He’s very happy. He laughs a lot. He wants a girlfriend - a big one, not a small one,” Rana said. “He wants to be a doctor. After school, he wants to study.”
Edward Meyer, vice president for exhibits at Ripley’s, said that during an evening out on the town on Monday, Magar developed a particular interest in New York blondes.
After posing in Ripley’s alongside a life-sized figure of the tallest man in history - the 8-ft-11-in American Robert Wadlow - Magar stopped at Times Square and was to have lunch at a famous deli and go up the Empire State Building.
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