The world's tallest man and shortest man met each other yesterday

At a special event in London yesterday, the world's tallest man and smallest man met each other for the first time.

At 21.5" (0.55 metres) tall, Chandra Dangi is the world's smallest man, while Sultan Kosen, at 8'3" (2.5 metres), is the tallest.

74-year old Dangi's size is caused by primordial dwarfism, while 31-year-old Kosen's height is an effect of a tumour affecting his pituitary gland - the tiny organ that controls growth hormone.

The photoshoot was organised to mark the tenth "Guinness World Records Day", an annual event by the publisher to encourage the breaking of records.

The day also marked the 60th anniversary of the Guinness World Records, which was first published as a free promotional book with a print run of just 1,000 in August 1954.

Fun fact: according to the company's history of events, a brewer at the Guinness factory was out shooting near the river Slaney in Co Wexford when he got into an argument about whether the bird he missed a shot at - a golden plover - was the fastest game bird in Europe or not.

He couldn't find the answer, and, in the process, realised "there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in the 81,400 pubs in Britain and in Ireland, but there was no book with which to settle arguments about records."

Remember when that was a thing, before smartphones? Golden days.