Leonid Stadnik of Podolyantsi, Ukraine has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest human on Earth.

In 2006, Stadnik was officially measured at 2.57 meters tall (8 feet 5 inches), surpassing a Chinese man to claim the title of the world's tallest person.

His growth spurt began at age 14 after a brain operation that apparently stimulated the overproduction of growth hormone. Doctors say he has been growing ever since.

While he may appear intimidating due to his size, Stadnik charms visitors with a broad grin and childlike laugh. He seems at times like a lonely boy trapped in a giant's body, even keeping stuffed toys on his pillow.

Life has not been easy for Stadnik. He had to quit his job as a farm veterinarian because he could not afford shoes that fit, and suffered from frostbite. But since his recognition by the Ukraine government four years ago, he has received help from all over. Strangers have provided shoes and clothes to fit him, an oversized bicycle and exercise machine, and running water for his home. The president of Ukraine even gave him a new car- although he doesn’t fit into it well.

"I have always dreamt that my life and the life of my loved ones ... would become more comfortable," Stadnik said. "My dream is coming true."

His neighbors joke that they may also benefit from Stadnik's success. "Of course we are proud of him _ we may have gas here soon thanks to him," said Nila Kravchuk, 75.

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Researchers say they have found a recording of a human voice that predates Thomas Edison’s first recording by almost twnty years!

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California

Earlier recordings have been played back, but they are not of good enough quality to pass for an authentic sound recording. This makes one wonder what else new technology can interpret from the past. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.php -via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: Isabelle Trocheris)

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There is no information on this clip, other than it's from a Japanese TV show. Maybe someone who reads Japanese can translate the screen text. I thoroughly enjoyed it. -via Metafilter

Update: Thanks to Kaz@MA, who pointed out this is the same band, Ooedo No Hikeshi, who did Smoke on the Water.

You know what they say about March: In like a lion, out like a lamb. March is National Umbrella Month. In honor of the occasion, the Luchtime Quiz today at mental_floss is on umbrellas. I scored 80%. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/13632

Genealogists Christopher Child and Gary Boyd Roberts have spent three years tracing th family trees of the US presidential candidates. The results are interesting. Barack Obama’s distant cousins include President George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman, James Madison, Vice President Dick Cheney, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, and Civil War General Robert E. Lee. Hillary Clinton is related to Madonna, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, Jack Kerouac, and Camilla Parker-Bowles. John McCain is a sixth cousin of first lady Laura Bush.

Obama is ninth cousin to Brad Pitt, and Hillary Clinton is ninth cousin to Angelina Jolie. Therefore, the couple’s daughter Shiloh is related to both candidates. Link

41-year-old Garrett A. Dalton of Naugatuck, Connecticut entered a radio station contest to win Hannah Montana tickets last year. He had to run a 40-yard dash in high heels carrying an egg on a spoon. The bad news: he didn’t win. The worse news: he was recognized on a TV news report. Authorities say Dalton was collecting workman’s compensation at the time for an injury that made him unable to work, and he is now under prosecution for fraud. Link -via Fark

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It only makes sense: a rug that lights up when you walk on it. They call it Footlume.

"The glow that the rug emits is very soft," said co-inventor Leona Dean, of London South Bank University, who also noted the innovation's party applications, "It can provide ambient mood lighting or flash in time to music as a talking point at a party."

Dean and another LSBU engineering student Zoe Robson developed the light-up rug, called Footlume, for a college course, and they will exhibit the innovation at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Show in London this month.

The electroluminescent rug uses rechargeable batteries and lights up in response to the weight applied when a person walks across the carpet.

It could also light the way to the bathroom in the night and serve as a child’s night light. Footlume is a prototype, but could be produced commercially if investors are interested. Link -via Digg

Dave Worsley and a team of engineers at Swansea University were researching ways to protect steel when they hit on the idea of painting sheets of steel with solar cell paint.

The idea is to coat every piece of steel cladding with a solar cell paint. As steel is passed through the rollers multiple coatings of of the solar cell system are applied to it. Based on the preliminary research, the materials that are being applied are suited to capturing low level solar radiation, which means that they should work just as well in areas where the sun doesn’t directly shine on them.

The innovation here is to equip the materials before building construction instead of adding solar paint as an afterthought.

If the Solar Paint project gets off the ground, it is expected that they would be able to press around 30 to 40m2 a minute. This may not sound like much, but put it into perspective: according to Dr. Worsley, if all the steel cladding produced by just one manufacturer was produced to be energy generating, at a very conservative energy exchange rate of 5%, it would be the equivalent of 50 wind farms, or roughly 4,500 gigawatts of electricity, per year.

Link -via Digg

21-year-old Frank Singleton of West Palm Beach, Florida was released Tuesday from being jailed on a trespassing charge. He immediately tried to carjack a Nissan in the jail's visitors parking lot! He grabbed the keys from the driver, but he couldn’t leave because he didn’t know how to drive a car with a manual transmission. He was quickly arrested.

"I don't think he wanted to go back to jail," Miller said. "I think he really wanted to get away and was looking for a car." When the detective was making the arrest, he asked Singleton why he did this.

"I didn't feel like walking," Singleton said.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-0325carjacking,0,2861462.story -via Fark

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We’ve featured Linerider videos before, but this has to be the ultimate. Created by TechDawg, it contains over 126,000 lines. -via YesButNoButYes

Annette Edwards of Worcester has been working to breed the world’s largest rabbit. She may have done it with Amy, a four-foot rabbit that weighs in the neighborhood of 49 pounds. The headline says “three stone”, the text says “three and a half stone”, the picture caption says “almost three stone”. A stone is fourteen pounds. Amy is a three-year-old Continental Giant rabbit. Link -via Fark

No one had seen a California wolverine since 1922. But pictures taken by remote cameras have confirmed that there is one in the Tahoe National Forest now. U.S. Forest Service research ecologist William Zielinski says hair and dropping samples have been sent away for DNA analysis.

"Fortunately, enough previous work has been done on the genetics of wolverines that, if we can get a good enough sample, our colleagues think they can help us identify the population of origin for this individual," Zielinski said. "The historical population of wolverines that once existed in the Sierra Nevada had a very unique and distinct genetic signature. So it should be pretty clear if it's a remnant from that population."

It's important to researchers because the nearest population of wolverines is 900 miles away in Central Washington. That means the animal either migrated across an enormous distance or it's part of a small group of native wolverines that somehow evaded detection for the better part of a century.

The North American wolverine is a member of the weasel family, and can grow up to 45 pounds. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and Oregon State University)

This grill thinks winter has lasted too long already! From I Can Has Cheezburger. Link -via Reddit

A group of college students who called themselves Fangs A Lot have opened a business in Britain named Animal Solutions. They sell false teeth for cats. And dogs and other animals, as needed.

Cats have notoriously bad dental problems. Cat owners seldom brush their cats' teeth or scrape the surfaces of the teeth to remove plaque. By the time a cat is 3 or 4 years old, she may already have periodontal disease that can lead to tooth loss. Tooth loss may also come about as a result of tooth breakage, particularly in the canine teeth.

Will the business take off? Only time will tell. Link -via Dump Trumpet

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Who knew macaques were such good swimmers? -via Arbroath