The 1971 warning, in slightly different verbiage, continued to appear annually until 1979, when it was significantly strengthened with the addition of specific prohibitions. “GWR will list no records involving consumption of more than two liters of beer or any involving spirits.” The editors were probably less concerned by D’Angelo’s ice cream eating antics than by the Welshman who tried to appeal to the book’s history by setting a record for drinking its eponymous stout. He devoured sixty-five pints of Guinness in fifty minutes and thirty-seconds, but the editors took exception to his technique, telling the Times, “This gentleman regurgitates what he has drunk halfway through. We are powerless to stop him, but we feel that such spectacles are not in the interest of anyone.” Despite the rule modifications, the new quantity limit still left plenty of room for the several remaining beer speed-drinking records, including fastest yard of ale and fastest Oxford University sconce, both around two pints worth. Those interested at taking a go at the upside-down beer-drinking record will be glad to know that it was made safe by the switch from the risky “most beer consumed while inverted” to the apparently harmless “fastest time to down (or up?) an Imperial Pint,” which remains in the book to this day—at a staggering three seconds. It seems surprising that the 1979 edition would still include this unusual beer record, especially since eight years earlier, while considering the ban on gastronomic records in 1971, a Guinness official told the Times that, “Some of the records have got to such extremes that it is dangerous to try to break them. Someone did do himself an injury recently trying to break the record for drinking beer when standing on one’s head.” The 1979 notice also bars eating records for “potentially dangerous” foodstuffs including—but not limited to—live ants, chewing gum, marshmallows, and raw eggs with shells. To the careful reader, this suggests that presumably dead ants, shelled raw eggs, and hard-boiled eggs still in their shells would be allowed, which makes one wonder whether the egg safety concern was rawness or the shells, neither of which are addressed fully by the prohibition. In a rare direct editorial comment at the end of this warning, apparently aimed at Michel Lotito, the editors called eating a bicycle “the ultimate in stupidity” but included it nonetheless with the rationale that it was not likely to be repeated. Not all banned eating records were discarded in the interest of safety, as when David Boehm, longtime publisher and rule interpreter of the American edition, dropped competitive goldfish consumption from the approved list. His rationale? The goldfish being used were getting progressively smaller, making the record less competitive. “The goldfish got down to the size of caviar,” complained Boehm.
It is interesting that Guinness considers eating live ants dangerous, but holding live scorpions (largest, at seven inches, warranting a two-page spread) and poisonous rattlesnakes (most, twelve) in the mouth is encouraged both in print and photos and by rolling out Texas Snakeman, Jackie Bibby, on television and at special events. Then again, Bibby, who has been bitten by rattlesnakes many times with no long-term ill effects, may feel that even his riskier stunt of sitting in a bathtub with over a hundred rattlers is safe. Rattlesnake bites are not usually lethal, and antivenin is widely available at hospitals. This is not the case for many other breeds of poisonous snakes, and one wonders what the book would say if Bibby decided to break Peter Snyman’s much older snake record. In 1979, the same year the book banned chewing-gum records as too dangerous, Snyman, who paved the way for folks like Bibby, spent fifty days and seven hours in an 80-square-foot cage, the size of a bathroom, with two dozen highly poisonous snakes, a lethally impressive assortment that included black mambas, cobras, puff adders, and boomslangs. Why? To set the record for “Snake Pit Duration,” of course.
Despite regular and changing warnings and prohibitions, and frequent mentions by Guinness World Records spokespeople in interviews touting safety that the book has stopped accepting eating records, they continued to appear in myriad forms. In 1996 Guinness staffer Carole Jones told the Los Angeles Times that gluttony as a category had been “Taken out in 1990. Even how many pancakes can be eaten in a minute can be quite dangerous to the individual. Also, with so many people starving in the world, it’s not really diplomatic.” However, four years later the 2000 millennium edition still included the record for the most watches eaten. Likewise, the ban on “gluttony and speed eating” records apparently does not apply to speed-eating contests if they involve pizza. Guinness World Records not only accepted the attempt of Belgium’s Tom Waes as recently as December 2, 2006, but also showcased it on their website. Waes ate a twelve-inch pizza in 19.91 seconds, making him the world’s fastest pizza eater, at least at the one-foot-size category. If mere pancake eating is considered dangerous, why does the 2008 edition include recognition for the most sausages swallowed whole in one minute, a much more dangerous-sounding pursuit, or for that matter, speed and quantity records for eating or drinking more than two dozen different items, from Tabasco sauce to meatballs to that old standby, beer? But the safety conscious will be glad to know that marshmallows and live ants aren’t among the resurrected categories appearing in print.
Food and endurance records may be just too good to let go, having been staples of the book since its very inception, but they are not the only dangerous record-setting pursuits to be banned and then brought back into the fold. The safety-conscious 1980 edition included a printed claim that no further disc jockey marathons would be listed after Dave Belmondo took the mark to 2,016 hours. Since this number so far exceeds all marathon efforts for other pursuits and any records for anyone ever staying awake, it seems completely implausible. Alternatively, it may have been set under different rules and standards than those governing other marathon records, or even other DJ marathon records; ever since piano smashing in its early days, the book has had a penchant for adjusting its rules on the fly. In any case, despite the admonition, the DJ marathon record is going nowhere—it has remained one of the most attempted and most published of all the book’s records. In fact, the Guinness World Records Web site lists it as the answer to the frequently asked question, Which Record Is Broken Most Often?, saying it is attempted every month. The 2008 book lists the record at a mere 125 hours, and states that on average the record is broken three times a year. This suggests that whatever bizarre circumstances led to the Belmondo 2,016-hour record have since been rectified.
Another safety notice once printed in the book but then widely ignored pertained to the bed of nails record, which was officially “retired” in the same 1980 edition. Weights placed on the chests of record setters had by that time passed three quarters of a ton, and the book noted that “no further claims for publication will be entertained or published.” The ban was poorly worded and apparently refers not to the “standard” bed of nails record, which is for simply lying on nails, but rather to the so-called iron maiden record where the participant is sandwiched between two beds of nails. In either case, piling weights on makes it more interesting. The iron maiden feat was so popular that on New Year’s Day 1977, when Sterling Publishing founder David Boehm held a record-breaking festival to usher in the New Year at New York’s Guinness World Records Museum, he featured it. Master Chi, whose real name was Ronald Chamberlain, lay sandwiched between two beds of nails while 1,410 pounds were piled on top of him, setting a new record. Not one to jump into things, Master Chi was cautious and first warmed up by lying on a single bed of nails and having an assistant strike his chest with an ax. Then he had his helper break a cinder block with a blow from a sledgehammer, made more challenging by virtue of the block sitting atop a metal spike placed point down on his chest. It was only after such elaborate preparation that he broke the iron maiden record. At that point Guinness apparently realized that not every record breaker can be trusted to show such caution and professionalism as Master Chi, and they banned the event three years later. This must have been very hard news for Master Chi to hear, since he had previously announced plans to better his mark by being run over by a forty-four-passenger bus whi
le in the iron maiden. Fortunately, Master Chi, who claimed that “pain is only when you accept it,” had a back-up plan: to someday jump out of an airplane a mile above the ocean and see what happened (it appears he never tried this). The two variations on bed of nails records had previously been printed together as paired entries, and even though the iron maiden vanished after the 1980 ban, the standard record continued to appear…and continued to be broken. Despite the original rationale, both iron maiden and bed of nails weight records were eventually deemed too sexy to pass up: a triple-decker bed of nails record returned in 2000 and the most recent book includes Chad Netherland’s record for having hundreds of pounds of concrete blocks broken on his chest with a sledgehammer while lying on a bed of nails. Netherland is a serial record breaker specializing in feats of strength and apparent danger; he is also an employee of rival Ripley’s Entertainment, publishers of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
The book’s on-again, off-again approach to safety does have some shining moments. In one eerily prescient act of rationality in 1989, the book banned all “youngest records” for pilots, a decision that was unfortunately validated in 1996 when seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff was killed attempting to become the youngest ever to fly across the United States, along with her father Lloyd Dubroff and flight instructor Joe Reid. Like so many copycat records, the stunt was inspired when Jessica’s father read about another young girl’s cross-country flight. Jessica had been given a flight in a private plane as a present for her sixth birthday, and amazingly was piloting a transcontinental flight just a year later, only to crash the day before she and her father were scheduled to appear on NBC’s Today Show, according to the Washington Post. The paper reported that both the National Aeronautic Association and the Guinness Book of Records had stopped recording such feats. Guinness spokesman Mark Young explained that the pilots were getting dangerously young. “First we’d get a request for an eleven-year-old, then a ten-year-old, then a nine-year-old. A parent would call us, or a flying school, but usually the parent.” The book’s decision to stop recording children’s long-distance flights resulted in calls from angry moms and dads, said Young. “Parents tell us that we are stopping kids from fulfilling their ambitions. ‘How can you not recognize these kids when you are recognizing ball-juggling, rope-jumping, all those things?’”
In many cases it seems that aviation and the Guinness book do not mix well, whether it is instances of people eating planes, flying them, or jumping out of them. The same goes for helicopters, as Jennifer Murray and Colin Bodill found out. In 2003, Murray, a sixty-three-year-old British grandmother, and her friend Bodill were trying to become the first to fly a helicopter, a Bell 407, around the world via the North and South poles, in an effort dubbed Polar First. They did not succeed and were lucky to walk away, Mrs. Murray with a broken arm and her copilot with chest injuries, after they crashed into Antarctica during a blizzard, a third of the way through the journey. Mrs. Murray was no unprepared novice and had already set the world record as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a helicopter in 1997. Not to be outdone, even as she was about to take off for Polar First, her husband, also sixty-three, was in the process of trying to become the oldest man to walk to the South Pole unsupported. They almost managed what could be a record in itself, an unplanned family reunion in Antarctica.
Some of the unfortunate incidents that have befallen record holders had little to do with their attempts to get into the book but were, rather, products of unique abilities. One such memorable occurrence involved Fort Worth, Texas, denizen William Fucqua, an army enlisted man with an unusual talent, one that allowed him to moonlight profitably as a human mannequin. His special gift? The ability to remain completely motionless for long periods of time. Fucqua got into the book in 1971 for a four-and-a-half-hour stint of utter stillness. Neither the record nor his job seemed especially dangerous, so Fucqua was probably as surprised as anyone when he was stabbed while working in a department store by a gawking husband determined to “prove” to his wife that the human statue was merely a realistic dummy. This kind of job risk may help explain why Guinness World Records claimed Fucqua earned a whopping $1,300 an hour back in 1971.
While many prohibited records have resurfaced after a short or long absence, some banned categories have actually stayed out of the book and appear to be gone permanently, such as youngest pilot, speed driving records on public roads, and tug-of-war. While the popularity of gastronomic records makes it difficult for Guinness World Records to ignore, the decision to discard tug-of-war may seem ho-hum to readers today, but the competition was a mainstay of the book for years, claiming its own subhead under the sports section. In 1979 alone there were five different tug-of-war records listed. Change was in the wind as early as 1974, when sailors of the Royal Navy attempted to break the tug-of-war record in Gibraltar but broke the rope instead, fracturing the legs of two seamen and cracking the ribs of a third. On each side were 300 members of the Plymouth and Portsmouth Royal Navy commands respectively, but 600 fit sailors eager for a place in the Guinness Book of Records proved too much, even for heavy-duty mooring rope. In 1995, a boy was crushed to death in Germany when another mass tug-of-war went awry. In 2006, Eastport, Maryland’s John DiPietro learned of the record book’s reluctance-firsthand. DiPietro organizes an epic, annual, townwide tug-of-war known locally as the “Slaughter Across the Water,” which he submitted to Guinness World Records as the longest tug-of-war over a body of water, using a 1,700-foot rope. But as DiPietro told the Washington Post, “We submitted it to the Guinness Book of World Records, but they won’t certify tug-of-war because of the inherent danger.” While disappointed not to be included in the book, the event’s participants were not dissuaded, because, as DiPietro explained, “We laugh in the face of danger.”
Despite the book’s best intentions, there often seems to be little reason behind deciding which activities are dangerous and which are not. While the misfortune of the brave British Navy sailors should not be minimized, it is hard for the casual observer to see tug-of-war, a record that has apparently been retired (based on DiPietro’s experience) as more dangerous than, say, trying to stop two planes attempting to take off in opposite directions by holding them with ropes. This was described in its pre-attempt press release as a case where the would-be record holder “will literally risk having his arms ripped off.” The potentially armless candidate was none other than Chad Netherland, the record holder for having concrete blocks smashed on his chest while lying on a bed of nails. The previous plane restraining record, held by Finnish four-time Olympic power-lifting champion Ilkka Nummisto, was fifty-four seconds. Netherland intended to go a full minute while holding back two airplanes trying to take off in opposite directions, a record never before held by an American. “In life, one’s greatest victory comes with the risk of great failure. This is actually much more dangerous than having 900 pounds of concrete broken off my chest with a sledgehammer while lying on a bed of nails—I’m used to that!” Not only did Netherland succeed, earning his tenth Guinness World Record, but immediately afterward, presumably having waited to make sure he still had all his limbs, Netherland successfully proposed to his girlfriend on the tarmac.
As far back as 1981, David Boehm was worried about dangerous records. As he later wrote, “One of the many disagreements I had with (director) Marv Minoff and David Frost was their propensity for including—nay, featuring—hazardous stunts on Guinness TV shows.” This admonition came from the same Boehm who hosted Master Chi’s iron maiden feat, compete with ax blows to his bare chest. His concerns came at just about the same time that the 1980 book included several printed warnings and prohibitions, and company representatives would continue to give these values lip service. “We just don’t want to encourage records that are gratuitously dangerous,” Peter Matthews, a consulting editor for Guinness, told the Los Angeles Times in 1996.
It is hard to think of things more gratuitously dangerous than records for smashing concrete on top
of someone on a bed of nails with a sledgehammer or risking being drawn and quartered by planes, so other than tug-of-war, what attempts does Guinness World Records actually ban? Overweight pets, for one. Notes in several recent editions, including 2008, remind readers that “heaviest pet” claims are no longer accepted, since some owners were force-feeding their animals. “That one got rested,” said spokesman Alistair Richards. These days, at least according to the few rules it releases, “lightest pet” records are also banned for the similar potential danger of owners starving a pet, yet the book creatively gets around this by allowing the record for “smallest” dog. Sleep deprivation is also banned—for the sake of sleep deprivation. Try to break the record for staying awake and you will suffer the unfortunate consequences that befell Tony Wright of Cornish, England. In a bid to surpass the 264-hour mark set in 1964 by American Randy Gardner, Wright went more than eleven days without as much as a catnap, staying up for 266 hours, only to discover that Guinness World Records had retired the record for health reasons. Rubbing salt in his wounds, Wright discovered too late that not only could the record not be broken, but that Mr. Gardner was not even the record holder. That would be Toimi Soini of Finland who had beaten Gardner the very next year, in 1965, and was in the book with his record 276 hours until 1990 when it was pulled from print. The catch—and with so-called retired records there always seems to be a catch—is that the book still recognizes scores of other marathon records, including my own nonstop poker playing record, which are for all purposes de facto sleep deprivation records and could very realistically exceed those of Wright, Gardner, and Soini, just as long as they aren’t called sleep deprivation records.
Getting into Guinness Page 23
