55-year-old Indian citizen Kashi Samaddar has completed an almost-seven year trip around the world. He has visited all 194 countries in the world, thereby setting a world record.

He spent £350,000 to visit every country on earth in the shortest time possible and thereby earnt himself a mention in the Guinness Book of Records – just don’t expect to be thrilled by his pictures.

Samaddar’s mission was inspired by trouble he had in South Africa in 2002 over his Indian passport. Samaddar then vowed to visit every country in the world to show it could be done.

The globe trotting adventurer was determined to complete the whole trip using his Indian passport – despite opportunities to adopt Australian and Canadian citizenship – as he wanted to prove an Indian could travel the world.

He also wanted to highlight the difficulties some nationalities encounter obtaining visas to enter countries – a problem he is very familiar with.

‘The most difficult visa to get was Moldova, which took me almost three years with many rejections,’ he said.

‘The problem isn’t with big countries like America, England or places in Europe, a lot of the time it’s smaller countries who don’t know what they should be doing.’

To abide by Guinness Book rules, he traveled using only public transportation. The rules state you only have to set foot in a country to count it, which may explain Samaddar less-than-impressive tourist photographs.

The photo above is of Kashi’s last place visited: Serbia Kosova on May 27 of 2008.

Links: Article at Daily Mail | More at World Records Academy.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by digimouse.

National Geographic’s Adventure Magazine named ten people as Adventurers of the Year, and invite you to rate each of them to help them determine the readers’ choice top adventurer. One of the profiles features 37-year-old Dean S. Potter, rock climber, tightrope walker, and BASE jumper. Potter set a world record in 2009 by jumping off a high face of Switzerland’s Eiger in a wingsuit and sailing for almost three minutes! The trip was 9,000 feet vertically and four miles horizontally. Links to all adventurers. Link to voting. -Thanks, Ethan!

The female of the new species of golden orb weaver spider has a body one and a half inches long with a leg span of five inches and weaves a web more than three feet wide.

The tiny male, however, has a leg span of just one inch. The variation of the Nephila species, named as Nephila Komaci, was discovered by US and Slovenian researchers in Africa and Madagascar

Nephila Komaci has a limited range and is believed to be an endangered species. Link -via Unique Daily

The largest shopping mall in the world is no longer the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The South China Mall near Guangzhou, China is twice as big! This is not a success story; there are only about a dozen stores open in the giant facility. However, because the mall is considered “too big to fail”, it is kept open with a staff working every day. The series POV tells the story in a 13 minute video. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

The giant horse eats 10 pounds of grain and drinks 75 gallons of water per day. “He is extremely popular, but his size always means people keep a cautious distance from him — although they shouldn’t, as he is a real puppy,” Thompson said.

Link Via Asylum

To get a little perspective, this is what the Burj Dubai (previously at Neatorama) would look like if it were built in downtown Manhattan. Gizmodo has a chart comparing some of the world’s tallest buildings if you’d like to envision others. Link -via YesButNoButYes

Oldest cop: Manuel Curry, 84
Sadly, Sergeant Major Manuel Curry died earlier this summer. But he did so as America’s oldest active duty police officer, having spent 63 years patrolling New Orleans — no picnic. In fact, Curry gained acclaim for holding his post during Katrina, even as many of his much younger colleagues either abandoned the city or joined in the looting.

Oldest plumber: Pierre John "Buster" Martin, 102
The London centenarian has garnered praise for his work ethic — he refused to take a day off for his 100th birthday and, at 101, attempted to go to work the day after being attacked by a group of thugs. Although rumors have circulated that Buster is really only 96.

Oldest world leader: Robert Mugabe, 85
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe may be the number one argument for a mandatory retirement age: The former-revolutionary hero, and current oldest member of the heads-of-state club, is considered by many to be the world’s worst despot.

Good ol’ Mugabe! It’s good that he’s keepin’ active with all the dictator stuff: Link – Thanks Alex!

Mr Bowthorpe cycled through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States – taking flights where necessary – before coming back to Europe.

This week he pedalled through Spain and France before catching a ferry across the English Channel to Portsmouth where he met his mother and father.

He finished his ride back at his Hyde Park starting point accompanied by his brothers and 20 other cyclists.

The trip around the world raised £55,000 for research into Parkinson’s disease. Link -via Unique Daily

Here’s the video clip of the Penny Pyramid Project from 2006 – the structure contained some 280,000 pennies (Marcelo’s most recent pyramid contains over 435,000 pennies):

[YouTube - turn your speakers down if you don't like O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, the techno version]

Thanks Marcelo!

Move over, Bao Xishun and Leonid Stadnik (who was stripped of his title) the Guinness Book of World Records has certified that 27-year-old Sultan Kosen from Turkey is the world’s tallest man. Kosen is eight feet and one inch tall! What does Kosen want to do with his new fame?

“The first thing I want to do is have a car that I can fit in, but more than that I want to get married,” he said.

“Up until now it’s been really difficult to find a girlfriend. I’ve never had one, they were usually scared of me. I’m hoping now I will find one.”

He went on: “Hopefully now that I’m famous I’ll be able to meet lots of girls. I’d like to get married.”

Link to story (with video). Link to a biography and more pictures. -via reddit

Sean Konrad caught a 48-pound rainbow trout. That’s a world record. But should it be? The trout he caught was a genetically-modified fish that escaped from a fish farm. It has three sets of chromosomes, which makes it sterile but able to grow unnaturally big. Konrad’s brother Adam caught the previous world record trout in 2007, which was also genetically modified. Whether this counts as cheating depends on how you see the sport of fishing. No matter where the fish came from, the fisherman still landed it, which involves a certain set of skills. However, fisherman elsewhere don’t have the opportunity to even try to catch a trout that big, because they don’t exist in nature. What do you think? Link

Sarah, a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, set a world record for the 100 meter dash today by covering the distance in 6.13 seconds. The event was held at Mast Farm, the zoo’s cheetah breeding facility. The race is a remote contest between Sarah and Zaza, a cheetah at Cheetah Outreach in South Africa. Zaza is expected to run her race later this month. To compare, the human world record is 9.58 seconds, held by Usain Bolt. Link to story. Link to Sarah’s blog. -via Metafilter

Thousands of people turned out for an attempt to break the world record for the number of people doing a simultaneous Thriller dance in Mexico City. Organizer Javier Hildago says 12,937 participated on Saturday, which would have been Michel Jackson’s 51st birthday. Officials from the Guinness Book of World Records will take some time to determine whether all those people completed the entire dance routine. The current official record is 242 dancers from the College of William & Mary. Link

“Camm,” as people call him, started serving beer at his father’s North Side grocery the moment Prohibition ended at midnight on April 7, 1933. The memory is as clear to him as the strike of the library clock that signaled it was time to start opening bottles of Fort Pitt. His immigrant father built a bar on that site in 1935 and Angelo kept working there, taking a break to serve in the Navy in World War II.

Cammarata says the work kept him young. Link -via Fark

(image credit: Bob Batz Jr./Post-Gazette)

It took guests more than three hours to roll out the gown, complete with 9,999 silk red roses attached to it, in the northeastern province of Jilin, state news agency Xinhua said.

"Both the length of the dress and the number silk roses pinned on the wedding dress can make history," the report quoted groom Zhao Peng as saying.

Zhao, who has applied to Guinness World Records, said he was inspired after seeing a story on the previous record holder in Romania, where the dress measured just over 1.5 km.

"I do not want a cliche wedding parade or banquet," he said.

Link (photo: Reuters/Stringer)

Think you can blow a pretty good-sized soap bubble? Chances are, it’s nothing like the creations of ‘Bubbleologist’ Samsam Bubbleman:

Samsam (real name Sam Heath) was aiming to pop the Guinness World Record set in 2005 in Minnesota, U.S., for a bubble of 105.4 cubic feet. He is not sure of the precise volume of his attempt in Finsbury Park, North London, but it stretched to 20ft by 5ft by 5ft at its biggest.

He is now waiting for official confirmation. ‘I’m confident it has obliterated the former record,’ he said.

Samsam, pictured with his creation, refused to reveal the recipe for his bubble mixture, saying it is the secret to his success.

‘With the right stuff you can make big bubbles with anything – a coat-hanger or even just your hands,’ he said. He developed the top-secret mixture over 20 years of trial and error.

The professional bubble-maker has been described as ‘the Willy Wonka of Bubbles’ by DJ Chris Evans.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by stacy09.

As rescue teams waited at the base of the falls Bradt calmly steered his fiberglass kayak into the raging water.

After disappearing under the water he emerged within six seconds with his broken paddle and sprained wrist.

‘Considering the waterfall, the injuries were pretty minor,’ he said.

The previous record for a kayak descent was 127 feet. Link -via Unique Daily

At approximately four hours into their descent–several thousand feet above the sea floor–a sharp clang sounded through the pressure sphere and the vehicle shuddered violently. Once their wincing subsided, the men did what they could to inspect the craft and its condition. It seemed that the water pressure at this never-before-encountered depth–six tons per square inch–had cracked the outer pane of the lucite window. For the moment the vehicle itself remained watertight, but the damage was worrisome. The Trieste was outfitted with a few safety systems; for instance, the ballast doors were held closed by electromagnets, so in the event of electrical failure the doors would fall open and drop the ballast, causing the vehicle to rise to the surface. But such systems would be of no help to the men inside if the 1,000 atmospheres of pressure crushed their delicate passenger compartment. Moreover, no other vehicle in existence was capable of reaching such depths, which meant that if her float tank became compromised there was no chance of rescue. Nevertheless, the stalwart scientists opted to press on.

It was also the last time anyone dived that deep. Like the space race, once it had been done, no one saw the use in continuing to pay for such risky adventures. Read the entire story at Damn Interesting. Link

“The hardest constantly was the tiredness,” he said. “I mean, you get over the loneliness, but tiredness, it’s an ongoing thing. Half the time I haven’t slept in 48 hours and it’s just hard to get enough rest.”

Sunderland said he made some good contacts along the way.

“It’s interesting just thinking back to the different places in the world because I have so many friends in different parts of the world that are like family, you know, and all these different experiences,” he said.

Link to story. Link to website. -via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: Lisa Gizara)

Biologist Charles Anderson has uncovered what he believes to be the longest migration route of any insect in the world. He plotted the appearance of the dragonflies known as globe skimmers in the Maldives and deduced that they must fly from Africa!

In Uganda, they appear twice each year in March or April and again in September, while further south in Tanzania and Mozambique they appear in December and January.

That strongly suggest that the dragonflies take advantage of the moving weather systems and monsoon rains to complete an epic migration from southern India to east and southern Africa, and then likely back again, a round trip of 14,000 to 18,000km.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by healthylivinggal83.

In 1995, two-year-old Hannah Clark of Mountain Ash, Wales suffered from cardiomyopathy and received a donor heart, which was "piggybacked" onto her original heart and took over its function. For ten years, the donor heart beat in Hannah’s chest, but she was developing tumors and could not continue the immunosuppressive drugs transplant patients must take to counter organ rejection. Since Hannah still had her original heart, doctors decided to disconnect the donor heart. After ten years of not working, her original heart took over pumping blood and functions without medication. Three years later, Hannah is completely recovered.

Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation, said cardiologists have long wondered whether a heart which is failing because of cardiomyopathy might be able to recover if rested.

“This seems to be exactly what has happened in Hannah’s case in which the donor heart allowed her own heart to take a rest and recover.

“This is an exciting discovery since it proves that, in some instances, a weakened heart has the capacity to recover – if it can be helped.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by healthylivinggal83.

Excitedly awaiting his 18th birthday in October of this year, Khagendra and his family are in contact with Guinness to take the official crown from 2ft 5in He Ping Ping of China.

Weighing only 10lbs, Khagendra has become something of a celebrity in his native Nepal, where politicians have joined the clamour to see him recognised as the smallest man in the world and villagers have dubbed him ‘little Buddha’.

Doctors believe Magar’s size is due to a malfunctioning pituitary gland, but no definitive diagnosis has been reached. Link -via Buzzfeed

George Gaspar makes history by sticking 2222 toothpicks in his beard, a new world record. Gaspar’s achievement beat previous record holder BeardPick by 222 toothpicks.

The record was set on February 4, 2009 at Gaspar’s home in Sherman Oaks, California. Ayleen Gaspar was present to witness the feat and count the toothpicks.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by oezicomix.

In the injunction filed in Richland, Riches – who acknowledges he is receiving treatment for mental-health problems – said: “The Guinness Book of World Records have no right to publish my work, my legal masterpieces.”

Those include lawsuits against New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, former President George W. Bush, Somali pirates, Britney Spears and Martha Stewart, according to a Wikipedia page dedicated to Riches’ litigious exploits.

He’s also filed lawsuits against Plato, Nostradamus, James Hoffa, “Various Buddhist Monks,” the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower and Three Mile Island.

In his latest court filing, Riches wrote about how he sued Black History Month, the president of Iran and butter substitute I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!

Link -via Arbroath

Sound recordings still available to us go back as far as 1878. In this collection at Listverse, you’ll find historical recordings of Florence Nightingale, Pope Leo XIII, and other audio firsts.

One of the strangest ones is the recording of castrato Alessandro Moreschi, a man castrated as a boy to keep his singing voice from changing during puberty (featured previously at Neatorama).

Other recordings listed in the article include an exorcism, the recording of the 1978 killings in Jonestown, and even the Sounds of Hell (yes, it’s a hoax, but quite interesting).

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrsmojorisin.

On Saturday, a man in Maryland successfully launched a 1:10 scale model of a Saturn V Rocket.  The Saturn V is the rocket that took NASA astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo missions.  The launch of the 36 foot tall rocket also breaks the record for the largest model rocket ever launched.

– via wired

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dalucero.

This is the world’s largest hamburger. There is a whopping 80 pounds of meat and 30 pounds of bun. If you’d like to order one yourself from the Denny’s it is offered at, it costs $379. If you enjoy strangely oversized things like this, be sure to click on the link for 14 other crazy, humungous objects.

Link