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Hundreds of Croatians painted themselves blue to beat a world record for the most Smurfs in one place - only to find they were too late. A total of 395 people turned up in the town of Komin but when they went to register their world record, Guinness officials told them they had been beaten by an English group who had 451 Smurfs gathered in one spot. One organiser of the failed Croatian record attempt said: "We could easily have got more Smurfs, but we thought that over a hundred more than the American record we found on the internet would be enough." (Source: Ananova.com)
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A 37-year-old Japanese man has been arrested after placing 10,000 calls to directory assistance. He did not need to get phone numbers; rather, he called because he enjoyed having the operators tell him off. He reportedly told police that he was lonely and grew to enjoy annoying the operators. "I would go into ecstasy when a lady scolded me," he was quoted as saying by Jiji Press. Telephone operators - who in Japan are almost always women - nicknamed him the "don't-hang-up-man". His calls sometimes exceeded 200 a night, Jiji Press said.
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Two students at Pennsylvania's Waynesburg Central High School were suspended for 10 days after they made an anti-drug commercial for a TV workshop. The students crushed candy and used it to represent cocaine. That violated a school policy that not only bans drugs but things that look like drugs. One of the students was also told to undergo drug counselling. (Source: Reason.com)
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A man called Russell has changed his surname by deed poll to Sprout. Russell Sprout, 26, of Southampton, cannot stand Brussels sprouts and hasn't eaten one for years. "Sprout was always my nickname and my friends dared me to change my surname to Sprout," he told the Daily Echo. It's not the first time he's changed his name. In 2003, he changed his surname from De'Ath to Bridges - a random choice from the phone book. Russell, a council tax officer, said: "Some people actually take it seriously and don't really bat an eyelid, they just don't get it." (Source: Ananova.com)
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A reader from Freemans Bay reckons Prince Philip is smarter than he's given credit for: "I think it's just great that Phil the Greek claimed not to recognise Cate Blanchett and asked her about his DVD player. I'm sure he knew exactly what he was up to, old aristocracy tweaking the nose of the new celebretards. Both irrelevant and subsisting on a gullible public who believe their PR too much."
