Weird World Records.

This is a co-blogging with ILuvNUFC of Look At This … blog, who suggested the fantastic theme of "World Records" – At first I thought, okay, how hard could this be?

It turned out to be quite challenging: there are thousands of weird and fascinating world records (so, my apologies to ILuvNUFC for dragging this project for a long time!). For example, who’da thunk that there’s an entry for farthest nasal projection, fastest human conveyor belt, and longest midget toss? For every one weird world record that I find, there must be hundreds more out there!

So, finding weird world records has been my obsession for the last couple of weeks. Alas, time has run out: so incomplete as it may seem, here are our picks of some of the world’s neatest and weirdest world records.

World’s Largest Monster Truck. This redneck wet dream is Bigfoot 5, the world’s largest monster truck made by Bob and Marilyn Chandler of St. Louis, Missouri:

BIGFOOT #5 was completed in the summer of 1986 for the sole purpose of handling the 10 foot tall Firestone Tundra tires. The tires were originally used on an Alaskan land train that was used by the US Army in the 1950’s. Before they were permanently installed on BIGFOOT #5, they had been used by BIGFOOT #1, #2, & #4. Its first show was the Fall Jamboree in Indianapolis where it donned dual 10′ tires, making it the tallest, widest and heaviest pickup in the world! Today, BIGFOOT #5 mainly sets on display at BIGFOOT 4×4, Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri.

Link | Like that? How about the world’s largest tire in Allen Park, Michigan?

Largest (and Probably Only) Airplane Ever Eaten. Michel Lotito, better known as Monsieur Mangetout (Mr. Eat Everything) is basically a normal guy, except he eats things like metal and glass.

He is the current (as if anyone else can do it …) world record holder of biggest meal ever eaten: a Cessna 150 airplane.

Doctors found that Mangetout’s stomach lining is twice as thick as a normal stomach lining, which explains why he is able to digest these things. The doctors concluded that his rare condition must have developed when he was still in his mother’s womb.

Link

World’s Fastest Strip Down. From Japan (where else?) comes a man who can take off all of his clothes in just 7 and a half seconds!

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] (Don’t worry, work safe – This is Neatorama, folks!)

World’s Fastest Furniture. At 87 mph, this sofa called Casual Lofa is the world’s fastest furniture:

This sofa is fully street legal! It has an MoT and Vehicle Licence and is powered by a mid-mounted, unleaded A-series Mini engine.

Along with the Leopard skin upholstery, the unusual features include a pizza pan (complete with pepperoni pizza) steering wheel, hand operated drinks-can brake ‘pedal’, a chocolate bar to select the 4 automatic gears and a knee throttle which facilitates a feet-up (or down)driving position.

Link – Thanks Patrick Reeves!

World’s Largest Maze. North Yorkshire farmer Tom Pearcy of "York Maze" created the world’s largest maze, in tribute of the 40th anniversary of Star Trek:

The maze, which is just outside York, covers 32 acres – the equivalent of 15 football pitches. It was designed using satellite technology which meant the paths could be cut to an accuracy of half a metre.

Farmer Tom Pearcy said it is the first time this technology has been used in maze design.

Link – via Boing Boing

World’s Longest Nose. Betcha didn’t know that there’s an annual longest nose competition in Turkey. Or that Mehmet Ozyurek’s 3 and a half inches snout wins every time!

At the annual longest nose competition in Turkey things are not done in a normal fashion. Noses are measured in anchovy bones, but we do not know how many anchovy bones make up 8.8 cm. or 3 1/2 inches.

Mehmet Ozyurek of Turkey nosed out the competition with his 3 1/2 snout to be the proud owner of the world’s longest nose.

Link

World’s Stretchiest Skin. The world’s stretchiest skin belongs to Garry Turner:

Garry Turner, of Caistor, Lincolnshire, England, stretched the skin of his stomach to a distended length of 15.8 cm (6.25 in) on the set of Guinness World Records: Primetime in Los Angeles, California, US, on October 29, 1999.

Garry has a rare medical condition called Elhers-Danlos Syndrome, a disorder of the connective tissues.

Link

Most People Inside a Soap Bubble. Sam Heath, better known as " Sam Sam the Bubble Man" set the world record for most people inside a single bubble. Sam used a 7-m wand to encapsulate 19 people inside the bubble!

Link – more bubble records at: World Bubble Records

Seagaia Ocean Dome: World’s Largest Man-Made Beach. This indoor water park in Miyazaki, Japan, features a retractable roof, controlled weather, and perfect waves every day of the year!

Link | Photos

World’s Greatest Miser. Hetty Green was a very rich woman – actually, she was once the richest woman in the world, probably because she didn’t spend any money. And I mean any:

Green was mainly interested in business, and there are many tales (of various degrees of accuracy) about her stinginess. She never turned on the heat nor used hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out. She did not wash her hands and rode an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that she spent a night looking for a lost stamp worth two cents.

Hettie’s son Ned broke his leg and had to have it amputated because Hettie delayed treatment while insisting on finding free medical care!

Link

World’s Longest Midget Toss. Midget or dwarf tossing has got to be one of the strangest "sport" ever! The longest toss recorded was in 2002 British Dwarf Tossing Championship, when Jimmy Leonard tossed Lenny the Giant 11 feet and 5 inches!

In case you’re wondering, the midget usually comes out ahead – they’re paid a princely sum to be tossed around. Some even made over $100,000 a year until the sport was banned in the US in 1989.

Link | Dwarf Tossing [wiki]

World’s Longest Eyebrow. Leonard Traenkenschuh of Port Townsend, Washington, has a 3 and a half inches eyebrow hair (and still growing!):

Leonard has two – count ’em, two – hairs past that length. His longest strand is 3½ inches.

“I didn’t set out to grow a hair to set a record,” says the man who has lived in Port Townsend since 1980 and works at the hospital transcribing medical records. “This just happened.”

Leonard, 56, has never been a particularly hairy person. He does not have a beard and does not have thick sideburns or a mustache. “I just have fertile brows,” he says.

Link

World’s Longest Ear Hair and Moustache.

What’s up with India? Three – count ‘em, three – of the world’s longest ear hair belong to Indians! Links: Radhakant | Antony and BD (previously on Neatorama: World’s Longest Ear Hair)

As if that’s not enough, two of the world’s longest moustaches also belong to Indians. The one on the left is Kalyan Ramji Sain of Sundgarth, India, who hasn’t trimmed his 11.1 ft (3.39 m) moustache since 1976. The one on the right, the reigning world record holder, is Badamsinh Juwansinh Gurjar, whose moustache measures 12.5 foot long.

World’s Biggest Cookie. Immaculate Baking Co. baked the world’s biggest cookie in 2003. The cookie is about 100 ft. in diameter and 40,000 lb in weight (yes, that is a photo of the cookie taken from 100 feet above – the red speck is a guy standing in the center of the cookie!)

In case you’re wondering, it’s chocolate chip. Link | Photos

World’s Largest Family of Jugglers. The title of the world’s largest family of jugglers belongs to the 13-member Boehmer family.

Larry and Judy Boehmer said this about their unique family:

Being in a large family usually means learning to juggle several tasks at once – making dinner while helping children with homework, bandaging a knee, keeping an eye on the horseplay in the back yard, and lending a caring ear.

However, in addition to normal family life, the Boehmers juggle clubs, rings, torches, balls, and anything else they can get their hands on. It all started 22 years ago with a juggling book, a motel room and a lot of spare time.

Link

World’s Longest Palindrome. Remember "A Man, a Plan, a Canal – Panama" palindrome [wiki]? Well, Peter Norvig wrote a computer program that spat out the world’s longest palindrome (granted, mostly consisting of names, but still …) at 17,259 words…

A man, a plan, a carpus, AEC, Rickey, EKG, navettes, Sorcha, Basil, … (rest here) …, Aia, Jose, Zitah, SBLI, Sabah, Crossett, Evang, Keyek, Circe, a supr, a canal, Panama.

Link – via Collision Detection

World’s First Obscene Gesture. Remember past Neatorama story on how Little Mister Apricot lost his title? (4-year-old Matthew Burgos flipped off the crowd after being crowned Little Mister Apricot!)

Well, it turns out this gesture goes back a loooong ways – about 2,500 years ago, in fact.

From SexualRecords:

Known to the Romans as the digitus infamis ("notorious finger"), its meaning hasn’t changed at all in the intervening years. Aristophanes uses it in The Clouds [wiki] (423 BC) as a literary device. In the following excerpt, Strepsiades, while talking to Socrates, deliberately confuses the obscene daktylos (Greek for "finger") with the poetic dactyl:

SOCRATES: Polite society will accept you if you can discriminate, say, between the anapest and common dactylic—sometimes vulgarly called "finger rhythm."
STREPSIADES: Finger rhythm. I know that.
SOCRATES: Define it then.
STREPSIADES [Extending his middle finger in an obscene gesture]: Why, it’s tapping time with this finger. Of course, when I was a boy [holding up his penis], I used to make rhythm with this one.

That Strep, what a character. Biblical scholars point to Isaiah 58:9-10, which seems to indicate that the gesture was known to the ancient Israelites: "If you remove the yoke from your midst, the point of the finger, and speaking wickedness….then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday." Either way, it’s a rich testament to the adage that actions speak louder than words.

Many more … ehm, interesting records at SexualRecords [yes, sensitive topic. But mostly text]

World’s Largest Bike. Greg Dunham of Stockton, California, built this ginormous 15-foot high, 25-foot long motorcycle on a dare!

Dunham built the 15-foot high, 25-foot-long monster bike over three years. It weighs about 6,500 pounds and Dunham steers it from a cage below the handlebars.

The beauty shop owner said he created the monster bike because his friends said it couldn’t be done and he wanted to prove it could. The reaction he gets from people who see it is icing on the cake. "People love it," Dunham says. "Fifteen guys came from out of nowhere to see it. One of the guys said, ‘Build me one!’ People love it!"

Link | Another big bike: Tom Wiberg’s Bigtoe Monsterbike

World’s Largest Ketchup (Catsup?) Bottle. You say ketchup, I say catsup, but we can all agree the largest ketchup er catsup bottle is in Collinsville, Illinois!

A water tower was needed for plant operations and to supply water to the new fire protection sprinkler system. Gerhart S. Suppiger, then president of the company, suggested the tower be built in the distinctive tapered shape of their catsup bottles.

Everyone was amused by the idea back then, little realizing they would create a landmark that would be world renown 50 years later.

Link | What is right, ketchup or catsup? Michael Quinion answers.

World’s Largest Gold Coin. How’s this for spare change: a 100,000 Euro gold coin made from 24-karat gold created by the Austrian Mint:

The coin, with a face value of 100,000 euros, bears a replica of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s famous hall on one side and instruments on the other.

Only 15 of the 24-carat discs – dubbed Big Phil and measuring 37cm (14.5in) -were created by the Austrian mint.

Link

Photo: Richard C. Paddock / LAT

World’s Largest Currency. Think that’s a big coin? That’s nothing compared to the currency in the teeny Island of Yap, where stone wheels larger than tractor tires are used as cash!

Hundreds of giant stone coins, some as big as 12 feet in diameter, stand by the side of the road, lean against houses or lie half hidden among trees and shrubs. Many of the mottled gray stones are centuries old and are worth thousands of dollars.

Though doughnut-shaped coins that weigh a ton might seem impractical elsewhere, stone money is an essential part of the economy and cultural life of Yap, a small group of islands 4,300 miles west of Hawaii.

The larger pieces are seldom moved and instead change hands in something akin to an electronic bank transfer. They are used to buy land, pay for services or provide compensation in cases of wrongdoing or negligence. Even stones that sank offshore long ago still hold their monetary value.

Those giant coins aren’t the only things interesting there:

On the outer islands of Yap, Western clothing is banned and men and women are required to go shirtless at all times. On the main island, also called Yap, the entire population is required to go topless on certain days of the year to celebrate traditions.

But some leaders worry that Yap’s customs are breaking down as islanders have more contact with the outside world, especially women who return after working on neighboring islands.

"When they come back they are more outsider than Yapese," Gov. Robert A. Ruecho said. "They don’t want to remove their tops."

Chief Ruepong says any Yapese who want to abandon traditional ways should leave.

"If they don’t want to be topless, they can live in Guam," he said.

Link

World’s Tallest Snowman. Meet Angus, King of the Mountain – the world’s tallest snowman. Built in 1999 in Bethel, Maine (apparently there’s a lot of snow there. And time. Lots of time.)

Some interesting statistics about this snowman are as follows:

Height 113 ft. & 7 inches tall
9,000,000 lbs
200,000 cubic feet of snow
4 ft. wreathes as eyes
6 ft. of chicken wire & muslin for the carrot nose
6 automobile tires as the mouth
20 ft. fleece hat
120 ft. fleece scarf
3 skidder tires for the buttons
2 – 10 ft. trees for arms

The snowman’s hat was made by seventh graders at Telstar Middle School.

His six-foot nose was made by local elementary school students and as a special touch, has the imprints of the student’s hands.

Link

Most People on World’s Largest Surfboard. This is a two-fer: Nev Hyman set the world record for longest surfboard with his 40-foot long creation (about the length of a school bus!) and the board set another world record for the largest number of surfers riding on one board (47 people).

Link

World’s Tallest Bicycle. World’s Tallest Bicycle was made by Terry Goertzen, a pastor of the Jubilee Mennonite Church in Winnipeg. The bike was 18 ft. 5 in. (5.55 m) tall!

The origins of the feat were innocent enough. Terry’s wife SuAnn had given him a welding set for Christmas and soon he was building bikes, including a multi-layered one. On a whim, he checked the world’s record for tallest bicycle. When he realized he was already close to the 4.3 metre record, he decided to beat it.

The local media enjoyed the event, headlining it with language about prayer or getting “closer to God.” A crowd of some 200 also had fun at it, cheering Terry on and buying the hot dogs and drinks sold by the church to raise funds for bicycles for students in India.

Link – via Recumbent News

World’s Largest Transport Ship. Yes, you saw that right: it’s a ship carrying a ship. Indeed, the semi-submersible heavy-lift ship MV Blue Marlin and her sister ship MV Black Marlin were designed to transport oil drilling rigs. This world’s largest open-deck transport ship was photographed carrying USS Cole, which was damaged by a bomb in Yemen.

Link [wiki]

World’s Largest Bowl of Pasta. Lisa and Steve’s got a unique wedding. Who else can claim to be married (on Valentine’s Day 2004 no less) on the Keeler TV Show while standing on the world’s largest bowl of pasta (all 7,355 lb. of it!).

Link

World’s Largest Cabbage. Bernard Lavery knows how to grow things. Giant things. In fact, he holds ten or so world records for heaviest fruits and vegetables. This one above is the world’s largest cabbage, which weighed 124 lb and measured 12 feet by 13 feet!

Link | See more at Gardening World Records, and a forum dedicated to growing giant veggies at iVillage’s GardenWeb.

World’s Largest Pumpkin. Larry Checkon set a new world record for heaviest pumpkin with his 1,469 lb. monster!

Link

World’s Largest Bagel. At 868 lb, 6 ft in diameter and 20 in thick, Bruegger’s Bagel made the biggest bagel in the world in the 2004 New York State Fair.

The bagel is so big that it needed to be baked in a custom-built oven and moved with a small crane!

Link

World’s Most Horny Animal! Meet Lurch, a Watusi steer and holder of the world record horn. Owner Janice Wolf of Arkansas measured Lurch’s horns at over 7 ft long and 37.5 inches around and are still growing!

Link

World’s Largest Human Rainbow. In September 2004, over 31,000 students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines wearing colorful shirts gathered together to form the world’s largest human rainbow. Link

Most Rattlesnakes in Mouth. Jackie "The Texas Snake Man" Bibby certainly lives up to his name. He’s got four – count ‘em four world records for: most live rattlesnakes held in the mouth (8), sat with in a bathtub (81), shared a sleeping bag with (109), and fastest sacking of 10 rattlesnakes (17.11 seconds). *Shivers*

Link

Heaviest Weight Lifted with Tongue. You wouldn’t know it but there is a world record for heaviest weight lifted with tongue. Yes, you read that right:

On September 11, 2004, sword swallower (he once swallowed a running jackhammer) and performer extraordinaire Thomas Blackthorne lifted 24 lbs 3 oz with a butcher’s hook threaded through his tongue.

Link | Tom’s Website (yes, difficult to navigate, but worth visiting)

World’s Fastest Drummer. Art Verdi holds the record for World’s Fastest Drummer. In this clip, Art Verdi reached 1,100 drum strokes in 60 seconds, as determined by a drumometer.

Link | Art’s Website

World’s Tallest Lego Structure. In February 2005, Legoland in Carlsbad, California, set the world’s record for tallest Lego structure ever made at 92 feet and 6 inches. It took 12,000 people using more than 400,000 bricks and five days to build the tower.

Link – via Book of Alternative Records (I’m curious to see the photo of this claim, recently submitted to the website: Most Robin Hood Impersonator. Anyone got the link to the photo?)

Farthest Nasal Ejection. If you’re looking for world records, you can’t go wrong with the Guinness World Records. It’s still the place to go to find weird world records, like Kevin Cole’s Farthest Spaghetti Nasal Ejection World Record:

Kevin Cole of Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA, holds the record for the longest spaghetti strand blown out of a nostril in a single blow. On December 16, 1998, Kevin successfully achieved a record distance of 19 cm (7.5 in) on the set of Guinness World Records: Primetime in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Link | See more at Guinness World Records

Balancing Heaviest Things on Head. John Evans has a unique talent of balancing very heavy things on his head. In fact, John holds no less than 30 world records of balancing things on his noggin!

Link | Other quirky records at Record Holders Republic

World’s Fastest Human Conveyor Belt. On March 3, 2005, one hundred students at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville, UT, set the world’s record for fastest human conveyor belt by "conveying" a mattress a distance of nearly 180 feet in just 2 minutes and 1 second.

Link – also see, the main website for World Records for Schools for other neat records by kids (don’t miss Most Paper Links of Pi, Tallest Ice Cream Cone, and Tallest Stack of Newspaper)