Records

I came across an article about Skye Broberg today.  As I’m sure you all know, Skye holds the world record for fastest time to cram her body into a tiny box with the lid closed. You’ll probably recall that she accomplished her feat in 4.78 seconds.

Don’t recall Skye? Hm-m…Well, she did accomplish her feat in September 2011, so maybe you can be excused your forgetfulness.

I like records, sort of. I mean, I don’t really care about things like who hit the most home runs or ran the fastest mile. Not that I fail to be impressed, but they just don’t capture the imagination. I mean, we all know people play baseball so naturally someone is going to hold that record.

But the quirky records are kind of cool, to my mind.

The record for the fastest time to eat a 12” pizza - currently 1 minute, 9.36 seconds - is held by Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, but only because he didn’t drop the pizza on the floor in front of our small dog, Zoey. I’m confident she could sow down that pie in the 9.36 seconds and give him one minute in change.

There’s a cricket that can do the nasty more than 50 times in four hours, “all with the same female” according to Guinness.( Opportunities for snarky humor abound.)

On a more serious note, and actually of some interest is that Helen Gibson in 1914 became the first professional stuntwoman, performing as a stand-in for Helen Holmes in The Hazards of Helen. One of her stunts involved leaping from a motorcycle to a train while both were in motion.

The record for most naked riders on a theme park ride stands at 102. And for a dollar, I’ll tell you where the ride is located, so you can bring your whole-body rubber glove.

One must wonder what Mr. Timothy McCubbin was thinking when he grew a 5.97-inch nipple hair and then announced it to the world….

Helen Skelton paddled her kayak 2010 miles along the Amazon River, and followed that up with a 500-mile stroll to the South Pole.

More areas of endeavor for which I didn’t know before today that an official world record was…ahem…on record include:
Burrito throwing
Tinned pea eating
Farthest distance to roll a coin on a treadmill
Skidding a car into a parking place between two other cars
Oldest fossilized vomit (160 million years - I’m thinking this one is going to stand, for now)
Largest piñata
Fastest time to make a bed by a team of two. (Frankly, I’d be more intrigued by fastest time to totally UN-make a bed by a team of two but of course, that’s an entirely different sort of project.)
Largest paint brush
And a personal fave…fastest time to drink a bottle of ketchup.

NOTE TO READERS: Can you tell who just spent a half hour trolling the Guinness website?