Interesting Facts

Paul Donovan called BT at 7.57pm on Saturday, August 1, to cancel his broadband package. He was put on hold with a pre-recorded message saying the 'lines were busy', a female voice then asked him to hold until one of their operators was free, he waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, he went to bed, but he didn't disconnect and left his phone on charge. (When he got up on Sunday morning, he was still on hold - 14 hours and 31 minutes later, which is believed to be a UK record, but it's not a world record. That honour goes to Australian Andrew Kahn, who called Qantas Airways to confirm his flight from Adelaide, Australia, to New York City. He phoned the airline at 7:22 on a Wednesday evening and finally hung up at 11:01 Thursday morning. During his wait, he surfed the Internet, slept briefly and caught up on some reading, for 15 hours, 40 minutes and one second. How long would it take you to finally hang up? ) Source

The video game Pac-Man holds the Guinness World Record for having the most "coin-operated arcade machines" installed world wide. (293,822 to be exact. It is thought that Namco has made nearly 3 billion dollars from the little guy, but the creator Toru Iwatani never made a penny, apart from his salary.  Such is the fate of many a wage slave.)

The caber, used in the Highland sport tossing the caber, is typically 19' 6" long (5.94 m) tall and weighs 175 pounds (79 kg). (The caber is not thrown, it is tossed, and it's not distance that matters, it's all about style. The "tosser"  rests the caber against his shoulder and lifts it vertically off the ground. The objective is to toss the caber in such a way that it turns end over end in the air and lands with the lower end pointing towards the tosser in a relative twelve o'clock position. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest caber ever tossed was 25 feet long and weighed 280 pounds. I wonder what they call the guy who tossed that one.)

A record-breaking stollen that weighed in at over 4,000 kilograms was created to celebrate the opening of Dresden's Christmas market. (If you want to make your own you will need approximately:-Stollen (rounded figures): 1,500 kilos flour 990 kilos seedless raisins (sultanas) 790 kilos butter 455 kilos sugar 200 kilos candied lemon peel 150 kilos almonds (sweet) 110 kilos icing sugar 95 kilos yeast 55 kilos almonds (bitter) 45 kilos lemon peels 44 kilos Jamaica rum 44 kilos powdered milk 30 kilos salt 5 kilos spices) Source

Artist, Dmitri Galitzine, who works with outsized vegetables, has claimed the fastest 100 metres paddled in a pumpkin record. (The record now stands at 2 min 0.3 sec, should you wish to beat it.) Source

Brazilian surfer Carlos Burle is believed to have surfed a 100ft wave. (He took on the monster wave - created by the St Jude storm - at Praia do Norte in Portugal. The current Guinness World Record holder, Garret McNamara from Hawaii surfed a 78ft wave at the very same spot in Nazare in Nov. 1 2011.  Footage of Mr Burle's amazing ride will be analyzed by the Guinness World Records team, you can view it on YouTube: Mad!)

2,000 commuters in London have been treated to the world's largest Eton Mess. (Weighing in at 167kg (368lbs), they used 50kg of fresh British strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, plus a generous serving of double British cream. It was created as part of Tesco’s Love Every Mouthful campaign. Traditional Eton mess is a mix of cream, meringue, and fresh berries - usually raspberries and / or strawberries. If you haven't tried it, you should, it's delicious. But it is not healthy, in spite of all that fruit.)

The world's largest flag is big enough to cover three football pitches. (It measures 1,145 feet by 744 feet, weights 5 tons, and was sewn with 44 miles of thread, breaking the previous Guinness World Record held by Lebanon It took 200 volunteers to roll it out at an airfield in Clinceni, near Bucharest, Romania but it was too heavy to flutter in the wind, so I'm not sure it can be called a flag really.)

Following International pillow fight day (yesterday), I thought I'd share this little factlet: the largest pillow fight in the world was fought was in Minehead, Somerset, England in 2008. 3,706 people took part for Children in Need . (Pillow fights have existed for a long time, but because of social networking flash mob events are massive,  promoted primarily via the internet. I would like to say that no pillows were harmed in these events, but it wouldn't be true - it's carnage.  Original photo by  Rama  {licenced by Cc-by-sa-2.0)

To date, the largest bubblegum bubble ever blown was  23-inches in diameter. (The bubble blown by Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, California in 1996 holds the Guinness World Record. People have been trying to break her record ever since:- )

The Queen may have shaken half a million hands, but there are other people who have achieved handshake greatness:- (In Atlantic City, New Jersey Mayor Joseph Lazarow was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for a July 1977 publicity stunt, in which he shook more than 11,000 hands in a single day, breaking the record previously held by President Theodore Roosevelt, who had set the record with 8,513 handshakes at a White House reception on 1 January 1907. On 21 September 2009, Jack Tsonis and Lindsay Morrison broke the Guinness World Record for the world's longest handshake, shaking hands for 12 hours, 34 minutes and 56 seconds. This record was broken less than a month later in Claremont, California, when John-Clark Levin and George Posner shook hands for 15 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds. The next month, on 21 November, Matthew Rosen and Joe Ackerman surpassed this feat, with a new world record time of 15 hours, 30 minutes and 45 seconds. At 8pm EST on Friday 14 J...

Ram Singh Chauhan is the proud owner of the world's longest moustache. (His tache is 4.29m (14ft) long, and he told reporters that he spends an hour every day cleaning and combing it,.  He also oils it regularly and washes it every 10 days.  And men say women are vain!)

No, not surfing the internet, proper surfing. The Guinness World Records organisation has awarded professional surfer Garrett McNamara from Hawaiia the world record record for the biggest wave ridden. (Back in November Mr McNamara rode a 78ft wave off Portugal. The wave formed above an undersea canyon known as one of the biggest wave-generators in the world. That seems like a reason to avoid the area, but there's no accounting for surf mentality.)

No, it's not a typo, I mean Jenson Bottom (well that's her nickname). Her real name is Jolene Van Vugt and she has just set a new land speed record – on a motorised toilet. (The 31-year-old former motocross champion was performing at performing at the Nitro Circus stunt show, and she managed to speed along at 46mph – 4mph faster than the previous Guinness world record. It's people like her who make me think there's hope for us yet:- ) Source

We've had the shortest sentence, but what about the longest sentence? Well in literature seemingly it is 469,375 words long. It appears in Nigel Tomm's "The Blah Story". (For many years people regarded the last section of James Joyce's Ulysses, Molly Bloom's soliloquy, which consists of two sentences to be the longest. The first sentence is 11,281 words long, and the second 12,931 words long. This held the record for the longest sentence until The Rotter's Club was published in 2001, which contains a 13,955-word sentence. There have been other contenders over the years. The Guinness Book of World Records had an entry for what it claimed was the longest sentence in English, from William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! containing 1,287 words. There is also a Polish novel “Gates of Paradise” written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, and published in 1960, with a 40,000 word sentence. And finally, there is a Czech novel that consists of one long sentence...

York is the host to the largest temporary maze in the world. (Every year, a field near York creates an amazing maze out of maize, nice little homophone there.  The reason it's temporary is that maize is an annual crop, so they plant it in May, cut the pathways in June, open the maze once it is big enough to get lost in in July, then they have to harvest it in September, and plough the field in order to start again with a new design the next year. Unfortunately it isn't free, but it is fun.)

Alik Gershon, 30,  a chess grandmaster, has broken the world record for simultaneous chess games after a 19-hour marathon match against 523 players. (He won 454, lost 11 and drew 58 and so took the record from the  former, grandmaster Morteza Mahjoob.  Mr Mahjoob last year bested 397 out of 500 chess players in Tehran.  How do they do it?  I can't even keep the moves of 1 game in my head!)

Deinococcus radiodurans has been listed as the world's toughest bacterium in The Guinness Book of World Records because of its extraordinary resistance to extreme conditions. (The coolest thing is that some scientists think it came from Mars. It's a Martian! Run for your lives!)

American Charles Osborne, of Anthon, Iowa, holds the world record for the longest ever bout of hiccups. (He hiccuped for 68 years from 1922 until 1990. Poor guy! Seemingly you can even hiccup while you're asleep.)

The largest Christmas stocking ever made, measured 106 ft 9 in long and 49 ft 1 in wide (heel to toe). (It was made by the Children's Society (UK) in London, UK on December 14, 2007. I don't know if anyone filled it though.)