World’s tallest woman meets with world’s shortest woman

The world’s tallest woman and the world’s smallest woman have met for a cup of tea to celebrate their sizeable world records.

Rumeysa Gelgi, who stands at a towering 7 feet, or 2.13m, and Jyoti Amge, who is just under 61cm tall, came together for tea time at London’s Savoy Hotel as part of a Guinness World Records event, The New York Post reported.

Despite their enormous size difference, the two women got along together like peas and carrots — bonding over the life challenges they faced because of their unique sizes.

Photos provided by Guinness World Records showed the massive size difference between the two.

“It was so amazing meeting Jyoti for the first time,” Ms Gelgi said. “It was difficult for us to make eye contact at times due to our height difference, but it was great.”

“We do have things in common; we both love makeup, self-care, and doing our nails,” added Ms Gelgi, who hails from Turkey.

Ms Amge, of India, also felt a warm connection with her counterpart*.

“I’m used to looking up and seeing people taller than me but I was so happy to look up today and see the world’s tallest woman,” Ms Amge said. “I’m delighted that I’ve met Rumeysa, she is so good-natured, and I felt very comfortable talking to her.”

Ms Gelgi, who works as a web designer, has a condition called Weaver syndrome* that causes accelerated* growth and skeletal deformities*.

Her condition means she can only stand up with the assistance of a walker.

Ms Amge is an actor and has no genetic abnormalities*.

Guinness World Records organised the meeting to commemorate Guinness World Records Day 2024.

This article originally appeared in The New York Post and was produced here with permission.

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GLOSSARY

• counterpart: a person corresponding to another
• Weaver syndrome: a rare genetic disorder that causes bone overgrowth
• accelerated: very fast
• skeletal deformities: problems in the bone structure that change the shape and/or size of a person’s bones
• genetic abnormalities: changes to the DNA structure away from the normal sequence

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QUICK QUIZ
1. How tall is the tallest woman in the world?
2. What medical condition does she have?
3. How short is the shortest woman in the world?
4. What things do the two women have in common?
5. What did they bond over?

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. The tall and short of it
Draw an outline of the shortest and tallest woman to scale, meaning that you need to devise your own legend of how to represent these women in centimetres on paper (for example 10cm of human height might be 1cm on your paper). You can come up with any scale you like as long as it accurately represents the heights of these women and your scale is written at the bottom of the page. You might like to try two different scales.

Time: allow 15 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Mathematics, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
If these two women were to start a business together, think of some fun and creative business names they could use. Write three of your best below;
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Time: allow 15 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

VCOP ACTIVITY
Imaginative dialogue
Imagine you were there during the event being discussed in the article, or for the interview.

Create a conversation between two characters from the article – you may need or want to include yourself as one of the characters. Don’t forget to try to use facts and details from the article to help make your dialogue as realistic as possible.

Go through your writing and highlight any punctuation you have used in green. Make sure you carefully check the punctuation used for the dialogue and ensure you have opened and closed the speaking in the correct places.