India is just one country where the fascination with records has led to a homegrown competitor to Guinness World Records. Titled the Limca Record Book, it was created by Coca-Cola India, and named for the locally popular Limca soft drink. Originally released in 1990, the book has been printed in seventeen annual editions and records the exploits of Indian record breakers. Similarly, Guinness-obsessed Singapore elevates national record pride with the Singapore Book of Records, published by an organization called Record Breakers Singapore, or RBS. RBS is the work of Helen and John Taylor, who claim to have amassed seventy-nine world records for fuel economy and speed driving, and boast “over twenty years major World Record Breaking Event Organizing experience between them, from Singapore to Australia, USA, U.K., Europe, South America and the Caribbean.” The first edition of RBS was published in 2005, followed by an updated 2007 version. The book’s website explains its mission and purpose: “The Singapore public love [sic] Records and trivia, thus the book will be a great success. Annual publication covering fastest, biggest, smallest, richest, oldest, longest, heaviest, shortest, loudest, tallest, lightest, youngest, greatest and so on.” Entry into the book seems limited to Singaporeans, thus finally making already-spoken-for “firsts” once again available. Move over Sir Edmund Hillary: Dr. Robert Goh and Edwin Siew now claim the record for the first alpine ascent of an 8,000-meter peak, Mount Xixabangma, in 2002, some forty-nine years after Hillary climbed the even taller Mount Everest. It would take another three years before the Everest record could be claimed by Teo Yen Kai, who in 2005, according to RBS, became the first Singaporean to scale the world’s highest peak. The book also gives some credit to the same Edwin Siew of Mount Xixabangma fame, who climbed Everest in 1998 with partner Khoo Swee Chiow, but who apparently got only partial credit as a permanent Singapore resident.
Singaporeans also vie for places in the actual Guinness World Records book, and as of 2006 held some forty-five records, considerably fewer than Ashrita Furman alone has. It is not many, especially if you look at the nation’s total as one record out of every thousand in the massive Guinness database, or one for every 100,000 residents, but it is more impressive if you look at the tiny country’s record possession rate per capita as nearly double that of the rest of the world. Right in line with global statistics, only about 8 percent of the Singaporean records made it into the 2007 book for a grand total of four. But Singapore’s pride and the scope of its collection is a microcosm of the rest of the world’s, including such high-tech feats as the fastest text message in English, held by a sixteen-year-old boy; the longest chain of people on inline skates; the most people wearing hats made of balloons; and the longest scuba dive, at a whopping 220 hours. While this was done in a controlled environment, and presumably with the Guinness-mandated safety breaks, it is still three times longer than my own marathon poker stint and falls into the realm of the truly astonishing. The scuba record holder, the same Khoo Swee Chiow who climbed Everest, also sounded just like may of his compatriots across the globe when he told reporters, “People have called me stupid, ridiculous, wasting time and other names. But I generally ignore people who talk a lot. I prefer to do rather than talk.”
Unlike India and Singapore, Canada does not have its own non-Guinness record book, but it does have an insatiable cultural thirst for records, and is home to one of the greatest world-record landmarks of all, the CN Tower. The broadcasting tower, while not technically a building, does have the Guinness distinction of being the tallest freestanding structure on earth, and this status has in turn made it a magnet to everyone from parachuting BASE jumpers to would-be record holders, including Ashrita Furman, who pogo stick jumped up its 1,899 steps for a memorable record and a segment on the Record Breakers television show. He is not alone. Toronto stuntman and past Canadian motocross champion Terry McGauran rode a motorcycle up the tower’s stairwells in 1984 to promote his skills to the film industry. “It wasn’t really a crazy thing for me, nor a daredevil thing either. I did it to promote my business, so the Toronto industry would know I was around.” The always elaborate Guinness World Records rules required that once he started, his feet could never touch the ground, so when his rear tire slipped after eight flights and the bike came crashing down on top of him, the uninjured McGauran showed the kind of moxie world-record setting often requires: he rode down, turned around, and started over again. In 1989 Lloyd Stamm, head of the service department at a Vancouver Suzuki dealership, took a different approach to using the tower for a motor vehicle record. Stamm drove a Suzuki Samurai off-road vehicle to the base of the tower, and with the help of eight mechanics and fifty-four United Way volunteers, he then proceeded to take it apart and carry it to the top in pieces. Determined to not only succeed but to do so quickly, Stamm’s team had practiced disassembling and reassembling the car in advance some fifteen times. They assaulted the tower only when they knew they could go from car to pieces and back to drivable condition in under two hours. It took about three more hours for the team to carry the 1,865-pound vehicle to the top, in sixty-one pieces, the largest of which was the engine block (around 100 pounds), which required two people to carry it—all of this for charity, of course. Stamm himself had the stamina for only one trip, carrying up the left front fender, but some of his volunteer army, which included seasoned triathletes, made several trips each. “They were tireless,” Stamm recalled. “They were in way too good shape. They looked like they move pianos for a living. Here I was thinking, ‘God, I can’t move another step.’ And these guys blow by with the engine.” Of course, Guinness rules required the team to fully assemble the car, now stranded on the observation deck, into working order. The entire feat took just five hours and thirty-eight minutes. Not to be outdone, the CN Tower itself recently earned a new spot in the Guinness World Records, its second, when it was recognized in 2006 for having the world’s highest wine cellar. Even Ashrita was impressed by the tower, to which he returned and shaved almost half a minute off his record pogo stick jumping time. “Most building staffs are stuffy about what they let people do,” he said from experience, having been turned away by the Empire State Building and Eiffel Tower, among others. “But the CN Tower, they’re crazy. It’s fantastic that they’re so open-minded. Maybe it’s because they’re Canadian.”
That could explain a lot of things. Like how Canada broke over 100 records—more than twice Singapore’s all-time tally—in 2006 alone. Or why, according to the book’s spokesperson for Canada, Carey Low, in that same year Canadians submitted a whopping 1,433 record claims. This tally included seven different Canadians who demanded recognition for having the longest arm hair. While Guinness does not consider this category worthy of a record, it is notable that no other nation claimed any arm hair records whatsoever, leaving the score in this noncategory Canada 7, Rest of World 0. Low’s explanation? “Canadians have long arm hair.”
As the Ottawa Citizen noted, “For good or ill, Canada has made its mark as one of the world’s most conscientious countries at trying to break weird and wonderful records.” The nation is among the world’s top five in records, and editor Craig Glenday told the paper that his organization receives more interest per capita from Canada than from any other country in the world. Sales corroborate this interest, with the nation of just 33 million snapping up some 200,000 copies annually out of the total 3.5 million sold. That means a country with less than half a percent of the world’s population buys 6 percent of the books, a rate more than ten times that of its peers.
At the opposite end of the global spectrum for all-things-Guinness is Chile, which stands out for its dearth of record-setting accomplishments. Four times the population of Singapore, Chile submitted only twenty-seven claims in the decade from 1990 to 1999. Of these, just ten were approved by Guinness World Records. To look at it another way, in ten years nearly 17 million Chileans could not equal a third of Ashrita Furman’s record output for 2006 alone—or 2007. Ashrita has broken as many world records in a month as it took Chile the entire n
ineties to do. Chile may have South America’s strongest economy, but it is poor in Guinness World Records certificates, averaging just one per year. Ashrita has claimed two in one minute. Even I got two in 2004. Failed attempts ranged from a thirty-hour singing marathon, well short of the record but trying for a niche based on entirely Latin American songs, to the world’s largest fry up, which, as the Financial Times put it, “cost some 706 animals dearly.” Perhaps the nation’s biggest success comes as no surprise, since one of the only things the book seems to love more than giant food is nationalistic giant food, which may explain why the record for the world’s largest Pisco Sour, a Chilean cocktail, was approved unusually quickly.
Guinness World Records in now entering the second half of its first century, but its global reach is still growing, and the record-setting tome may have awakened a sleeping dragon in the world’s largest country. Only after the relaxation of China’s Communist rule was the book first allowed to be published and sold in Mandarin in the late 1990s. Since then, record setting has taken hold as a social phenomenon, though the Chinese, a bit late to the party, do not seem to have figured out the ground rules as well as some of their global competitors. According to Wu Xiaohong, a former college lecturer who became the Guinness adjudicator in China, less than 1 percent of the claims she receives warrant being passed on to her London colleagues—who then reject nine out of every ten. Still, London’s Daily Telegraph reported in 2005 that a craze of record breaking is sweeping the nation that already had the world’s largest population, largest army, and largest wall. In 2004 alone, twenty new records were granted, minuscule for such a large country, but represented a growth rate of 25 percent and finally took China’s total over 100, enough to put it in the world’s top 10 for the first time. Expect much more from the country that recently gave us Bao Xi Shun, the world’s tallest living man until 2007, especially if Miss Wu’s theory is correct: “As Chinese people live more comfortable lives, they have more time to do things they like. They have the time to live out their dreams. People phone us from all over China. Everyone wants to be the best. They sense that the book of records has given them a channel. They have found a stage they can show themselves on. Society in China is changing. China is opening up to the world and it wants to catch up with the developed countries.”
Even as China roars onto the world record scene, some developed countries are heading in the opposite direction, most notably the very place where the Guinness Book of Records was conceived, Ireland. At the outset, Ireland had tons of records, especially since the original Guinness Book of Records had extensive entries for things like the largest stone and highest point for each of the various components of the British Isles. But times have changed, and today everyone from the Germans to the Aussies hold more records than the denizens of County Wexford and its surroundings. The passion, interest, and pride in the book still runs high in Ireland, and the decline of Irish record setting has not gone unnoticed. Since the fiftieth anniversary of the book, several articles have recounted this theme, and the Irish News, Irish Independent, and Daily Mail have all done stories analyzing specifically how Ireland fares in the modern book compared with the original. The answer, according to the Daily Mail, is not so good. “How has Ireland fared in this edit? Is our stock up or down in the record world of 2007? Alas the news is more bad than good. First off, there’s no more space left for Sir Hugh’s original County Wexford query about grouse. Neither is there room for the world’s oldest cow, Big Bertha, a Fresian, born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1945 in County Kerry, who passed on to the great milking shed in the sky in 1993 aged 48. Big Bertha also held the record for lifetime breeding as she produced 39 calves—but both categories have now been dropped from the book.”
The Irish do hold quite a few records, but like everyone else, most of them have been discarded from the book to make room for new entrants like washing machine throwing. Interestingly, Ireland seems to have a disproportionate number of very successful entertainers, the basis for many of its records. Previous appearances in the book that have disappeared and may or may not be official record holders today include the likes of U2, Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof, dancing zillionaire Michael Flatley, boy bands Boyzone and Westlife, John Devine (world’s fastest tap dancer), dramatist Samuel Beckett, author Bram Stoker, and actress Greer Garson. Most amazing, especially if, like me, you’ve never heard of him, is Daniel O’Donnell, whom the Daily Mail describes as “the most consistent chart artist ever in Britain, with at least one new Top 40 album every year between 1991 and 2006.” Go figure.
Despite the loss of Riverdance mastermind Flatley and his highest-paid dancer record, Irish Dance remains in the book under Mass Participation, for the 7,764 dancers who strutted their stuff in the streets of Cork. Anyone who has driven the winding country roads of Ireland and shuddered at the inability to see around any bends because the view is always obscured by dense foliage will not be surprised to find that the world’s tallest hedge, more than thirty feet high, can be found in County Offaly. But perhaps Ireland’s greatest claim to record-setting dominance comes in the sport of hurling, for which the island holds all five records listed in the book, supporting the Irish Independent’s (unofficial) assertion that the country is the world’s greatest hurling nation.
Admittedly, competition in hurling is not as spirited on the global stage as it is for many other Guinness records. Therefore Ireland’s most surprising dominance, especially given stiff competition from its record-mad Anglo counterparts, India, and the equally Guinness-obsessed Pacific Rim, is its status as the Greatest Tea-Drinking Nation on Earth. The Irish consume 1,184 cups of tea per person each year, more than three a day for every man, woman, and child. As the Independent notes, “That’s a staggering amount of tea. And yet, it’s one of the less interesting records. Compared to the wealth of totally useless information on offer throughout the book (Largest Underpants, Oldest Twins, Most Produced WWII Fighter), a statistic on tea consumption shouldn’t seem very important. But it was an Irish record. Other records may be bigger or flashier—most cockroaches eaten in a minute, anyone?—but this one is ours.” The publishers have not forgotten the civic pride that the book enjoys on the Emerald Isle, and any perceived slight or loss of ground in record setting might be at least partially offset by the fact that the country received a unique nod from Guinness with the 1994 release, The Guinness Book of Irish Facts & Feats. Why India, Canada, and many other countries have not received their own self-selected editions rather than just translations of the master book is anybody’s guess. It might just be a matter of time.
Whether it is the Irish clinging to their national Guinness pride of bygone decades, the Chinese embracing record setting as an element of growing political and economic freedom, or India emulating Western superpowers, there is little doubt that the appeal of Guinness World Records is global—and growing. New museums bring records to life in India and beyond, the addition of the Mandarin edition made the book accessible to virtually every country on earth, and the reach of television is now just as broad. In the last two years alone, new record-related shows produced by Guinness World Records TV have been added in Australia, Italy, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and China, where it is broadcast on China Central Television, the largest network in the largest nation on earth. Even more recently, an Arabic language version of the show was produced and immediately snapped up by stations in eighteen different countries: Bahrain, Brunei, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, UAE, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. These newcomers join the dozens of countries that already had Guinness World Records–based shows on the air, including Japan, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Finland, bringing the current total to some eighty-five countries where record breaking has gone prime time. Considering the explosion of bizarre feats that resulted from the BBC’s Record Breakers, the ramifications of similar broadcasts suddenly expanded to every corner of the globe defies the imagination. Rig
ht now, chefs craving their moment in the spotlight might be whipping up the world’s largest bowl of kimchi, the heaviest falafel, the grandest adobo, or the biggest doner kebab. Wait…that one is already in The Book.
9
The Dark Side: Guinness Records Gone Bad
Between 10,000 to 20,000 claims are rejected because the attempts are too harmful, such as the bid by a 10-year-old boy to push 135 pins into his thumb.
—TORONTO SUN, JULY 15, 2007
A 10-year-old girl in China’s Hunan Province swam for three hours in a tributary of Yangtze river Tuesday with hands and feet bound, hoping she would be inscribed into the Guinness book of world records some day. “Next time, she will swim further and I’ll follow her in a boat to ensure safety,” said the father.
—INDO-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE, OCTOBER 4, 2007
Many would-be record breakers fail in their attempts, but rarely do things go so badly as they did for the late Hans Rezac. The effect of record setting is widely varied among its practitioners, and many people have set a Guinness World Record, enjoyed their moment in the sun, and then gone back to life as usual, putting the book and its feats behind them for good. Others, as Fame Junkies author Jake Halpern theorized, become addicted to the rush that record setting brings, just as if they were hooked on chocolate, gambling, sex, or drugs, and cannot let go, finding fulfillment only in more, and often more dramatic, feats. Among those disposed toward serial record breaking, camps are divided, with Ashrita Furman and Joachim Suresh at one extreme, accumulating Guinness World Records like teenagers collect baseball cards, but in relatively harmless pursuits, with no signs of constantly ascending drama or difficulty. Ashrita might pull off an astonishing feat of physical endurance for one record, and then break the most finger snaps in a minute record the next, while some of his records are measured in seconds rather than miles or hours. He has come back sore, bruised, bloodied, and disoriented from his attempts, but when he fails and does not do enough crunches or jumping jacks in an hour to break a record, he lives to fight another day. Not so for those who follow in the fatal footsteps of Channel-swimming pioneer Matthew Webb. It appears that in his second and third bids for record book immortality, Hans Rezac found himself closer to Webb’s end of the danger spectrum than Furman’s.
Getting into Guinness Page 21
