What a strange story!

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I was just searching for something online and, as often happens, I found something completely different. This story about the recent death of the ‘world’s dirtiest man’ who finally died at age 94 after being persuaded to take a shower not long before. Of course headlines can be misleading, saying he didn’t shower for 60 years could mean that he simply had baths instead.... but it seems that this man really did avoid any kind of washing for somewhere between 60 and 70 years and had various other rather nasty habits as well. The same story is reported by a whole slew of news outlets, at least some of which are reasonably credible! He lived outdoors, sleeping in a hole in the ground, until a few years ago when villagers apparently built him a concrete block shack to sleep in. Then earlier this year they persuaded him to wash, in the hope that being a bit cleaner would help him find some female companionship. I have to admit that I’m not sure that would be enough – his habit of smoking animal faeces, or a handful of cigarettes at once, would be somewhat offputting as well, I would have thought. But in any case it was in vain, as he sickened and died a few months later.