Category: World Records

Wigan retains pie-eating title with a new world record

On By A.P.In Adlington, Australia, Bolton, competitive eating, Manchester, Martin Clare, Neil Collier, Wigan, World Pie-eating Championship, World Records1 Comment

pie

Pies, bakes, pasties and rolls

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The World Pie-eating Championship has now been won and the new king of the gravy, meat and crusty pastry is Martin Clare.

He is 34 and a furniture-maker from Wigan, home of the annual extravaganza at Harry’s Bar, which comes as as big relief to the town which has hosted the event for the last 21 years.

Outsiders keep trying to snatch the glory, notably a posse from scorned local rival Adlington, and past winners have come from Bolton, Manchester and even more foreign places such as Australia. Clare is a fine figure of a pie-eater and he demolished the 200gm pie in 23.53 seconds which pips the 23.91 set by Boltonian civil servant Neil Collier two years ago.

Speaking through crumbs, after receiving his gold medal in a ceremony modelled on the Olympics and Paralympics, Clare said: “This is the biggest thing I have ever won.” He was applauded by a large crowd and Harry’s Bar which had been un-nerved earlier when the first tray of pies delivered by the contest’s sponsors Poole’s Pies turned out to be frozen.

Harry’s Bar has insufficient microwave space to deal with such an issue and there was a further delay when organisers checked their insurance and found no reference to cover for mouth roofs scalded by pie. Iain Macauley who is the Lord Coe of the ‘Pielympics’ as this year’s competition was renamed, said:

Parts of the inside of microwaved pies can be as hot as the surface of the sun, so we had to have a delay before we could check with our thermometer – somewhat ominously a cow one borrowed from a vet – that they were safe.

The Pielympics copied the London Games’ successful model of ‘Gamesmakers’, in the shape of two ‘Gamesmakeresses’, one of them the landlady of Harry’s Bar, Susan Farnworth. Macauley said:

She was very good at telling people where to go, although this was mostly with people who annoyed her and didn’t always take the form of advice on how to get best view.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/dec/12/world-pie-eating-championship-winner-wigan-pies

115-year-old Iowan woman dies, was world’s oldest person

On By A.P.In Besse Cooper, Bishop Drumm Retirement Center, Dina Manfredini, Iowa, Japan, Jiroemon Kimura, Johnston, Kyotango, Kyoto, Lori Logli, oldest person in the world, World RecordsLeave a comment

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This file April 2010 photo shows Dina Manfredini of Johnston, Iowa. Manfredini, who inherited the title of world’s oldest person less than two weeks ago, died Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, at age 115, her granddaughter Lori Logli said. She did not elaborate on the cause of her grandmother’s death. Manfredini was born on April 4, 1897, in Italy, according to Guinness officials. She moved to the United States in 1920 and settled in Des Moines with her husband.

A 115-year-old Iowa woman’s granddaughter says the woman has died less than two weeks after inheriting the title of world’s oldest person.

Dina Manfredini’s granddaughter Lori Logli says Manfredini died Monday morning. Logli wouldn’t elaborate on her grandmother’s cause of death.

Manfredini lived at the Bishop Drumm Retirement Center in Johnston. Guinness World Records confirmed she inherited the title of world’s oldest living person less than two weeks ago. Bessie Cooper of Georgia previously held the title at age 116.

Guinness spokesman Robert Young says a Japanese man is believed to now hold the title. Jiroemon Kimura was born on April 19, 1897, which makes him just 15 days younger than Manfredini. Young says Kimura, of Kyotango in Kyoto, also is believed to be the second-oldest man in documented history.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/17/5059978/115-year-old-woman-dies-was-worlds.html#storylink=cpy

Besse Cooper, World’s Oldest Person, Dies at 116. 114 year old Iowan Dina Manfredini is new record holder.

On By A.P.In 19th Amendment, 80s, Besse Cooper, centenarian, Dina Manfredini, East Tennessee State University, Georgia, gerontology, Guiness Book of World Records, Iowa, Jeanne Calment, Johnson City’s East Tennessee Normal School, Johnston, junk food, log cabin, Maria Gomes Valentin, Monroe, oldest person in the world, Robert Young, Sidney Cooper, stomach flu, Sullivan County, supercentenarian, Tennessee, Thomas Dewey, World Records1 Comment

Besse Cooper, Paul Cooper

 

The 116-year-old woman believed to be the oldest person in the world passed away yesterday afternoon.

The Associated Press reported that Besse Cooper, a retired Georgia school teacher with a passion for politics, died quietly in her bed at a Monroe, Ga. nursing home about an hour’s drive from Atlanta. Cooper had recently battled stomach flu, but she had reportedly recovered by Monday. On Tuesday, Cooper had her hair set and watched a Christmas movie, but then she experienced breathing problems. She expired at about 2 p.m. after receiving oxygen.

“With her hair fixed it looked like she was ready to go,” Sidney Cooper, Besse Cooper’s 77-year-old son, told the AP.

(MORE: World’s Oldest Dad, 96, Fathers Another Child)

The younger Cooper said his mother was a determined, strong and intelligent individual. CNN reported that just five years after her birth in 1896, Besse Cooper started walking from her family’s Sullivan County, Tenn. log cabin to school in order to make sure one of her brothers got to class. Her time in the classroom developed into a love for school, and she eventually studied education at Johnson City’s East Tennessee Normal School (now East Tennessee State University).

After graduation, she started teaching in Tennessee for $35 an hour, but she moved to Monroe during World War I after her friend informed her she could make more money in the Peach State, according to CNN.

In addition to her appreciation for education, Besse Cooper also developed a fondness for politics. CNN reported she joined the suffrage movement when she was 24, speaking about the importance of having a voice in politics and registering women to vote. After the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, she never missed a chance to cast her ballot — except twice (In 2012 and in 1948, when she and her husband — who died in 1963 — believed Thomas Dewey would easily win).

Sidney Cooper told CNN that his mother cherished her 80s most out of the nearly 12 decades she lived. He said she loved to garden, watch the news on TV and read — despite her declining eyesight. But Besse Cooper still had it going on, even during the last years of her life. As an 111-year-old, she impressed Robert Young, Guinness senior consultant for gerontology, with her abilities.

“It’s a sad day for me,” Young told AP of Besse Cooper’s death. “At that age she was doing really well, she was able to read books.”

AP reported the supercentenarian was distinguished as the oldest person on the planet in January 2011. In May of the same year, however, Guinness World Records discovered another woman who was 48 days older, Brazilian Maria Gomes Valentin. After Valentin died the following month, Cooper reclaimed the honor no other Georgian has ever received. She told Guinness in 2012 that her secret to longevity was staying out of others’ business and abstaining from junk food.

Besse Cooper’s death makes 115-year-old Dina Manfredini, who lives in Johnston, Iowa, the new record holder. Only seven other people in history have bested Besse Cooper’s time on this Earth — 116 years and 100 days, according to Guinness. The oldest person ever documented — France’s Jeanne Calment, who passed away in 1997, lived to be 122.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/05/besse-cooper-worlds-oldest-person-dies-at-age-116/#ixzz2EDha9BwH

Global first: Graham Hughes visits all 201 sovereign states without flying

On By A.P.In Britain, Graham Hughes, Kebmodee, World RecordsLeave a comment

 

A British adventurer has become the first person to travel to all 201 sovereign states in the world without flying, ending his four-year odyssey early Monday when he arrived in South Sudan, the world’s newest nation.

Graham Hughes has used buses, boats, taxis, trains, and his own two feet – but never an airplane – to travel 160,000 miles in exactly 1,426 days, spending an average of less than $100 a week.

“I love travel, and I guess my reason for doing it was I wanted to see if this could be done, by one person traveling on a shoestring,” Mr. Hughes tells the Monitor Monday by telephone from Juba, South Sudan’s capital. “I think I also wanted to show that the world is not some big, scary place, but in fact is full of people who want to help you even if you are a stranger.”

Hughes, 33, set out from his home in Liverpool in northern England on New Year’s Day 2009.

Since then, he has visited all 193 United Nations member states plus Taiwan, Vatican City, Palestine, Kosovo, Western Sahara, and the four home nations of the United Kingdom.

Guinness World Records have confirmed that Hughes, who has been filming the trip for a documentary and raising money for a charity called Water Aid, is the first person to achieve this feat without flying.

“The main feeling today is just one of intense gratitude to every person around the world who helped me get here, by giving me a lift, letting me stay on their couch, or pointing me in the right direction,” Hughes said Monday. “There were times, sitting in a bus station in Cambodia at one in the morning, riding some awful truck over bad roads, when I thought, why am I doing this? But there was always a reason to keep going.”

Highlights were swimming in a lake of jellyfish in the Pacific archipelago of Palau, watching one of NASA’s last Space Shuttle launches, and dancing with the jungle tribes of Papua New Guinea.

“People asked me how I was going to get to Afghanistan or Iraq or North Korea, but they were the easy ones, you don’t even need a visa for Iraq, you just walk across the border from Turkey,” he says.

“The really tough ones were places like Nauru, and the Maldives and the Seychelles, island countries where there were also sometimes pirate threats.”

To cross oceans, Hughes hitched lifts with cargo ships. He spent four days in an open fishing canoe from Senegal to Cape Verde, and was then arrested when he arrived.

Later, officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo jailed him for six days believing he was a spy.

“None of this put me off, it just made me more bloody-minded to succeed,” he says.

The hardest point, “when I just wanted to give up,” he remembers, was after his older sister, Nicola, died from cancer two years ago at the age of 39. Hughes rushed home to see her before she died.

“She told me not to stop the trip, but I was at a real low point. I’d done 184 countries and had only 17 to go and I thought why not leave it there,” he says. The memory of his sister spurred him on, as did the people that he met as he traveled and the money he was raising for Water Aid, which works to bring clean water to people in the developing world.

“If you take everything that you know of the world from the news, it’s all the bad stuff and you get very paranoid that everyone is out to get you,” he says. “But the most amazing thing to me is that everyone I met looked after me and I didn’t even know them.”

Hughes plans to stay in South Sudan only until Wednesday. But he will not then be flying home.

He says to “keep in the spirit of the adventure” he will continue through Africa and across Europe by bus and boat, aiming to return home to Liverpool by ferry from Ireland in time for Christmas.

“Someone wrote to me and pointed out that this would be the trip of a lifetime for most people, but for me it’s essentially just the bus home,” he says. After a long rest, he says he will then begin exploring options to continue with a career in film-making.

http://news.yahoo.com/global-first-brit-visits-201-states-without-flying-183243870.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

World’s Oldest Digital Computer is Being Re-Booted

On By A.P.In digital computer, Harwell Dekatron, The National Museum of Computing, World RecordsLeave a comment

 

One of the world’s first digital computers to replace the handwritten calculations of human “computors” is getting an official reboot that could lead to a spot in the Guinness Book of Records.

The 61-year-old Harwell Dekatron — about the size and weight of an SUV — was originally hailed as a slow, steady machine capable of delivering error-free calculations while running for 90 hours a week. It has survived to become the oldest original working digital computer following the announcement of its completed restoration by The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) in the U.K. today (Nov. 20).

“In 1951, the Harwell Dekatron was one of perhaps a dozen computers in the world, and since then, it has led a charmed life surviving intact while its contemporaries were recycled or destroyed,” said Kevin Murrell, a trustee at TNMOC.

The computer relies on 480 relays that have more in common with telephone exchanges rather than modern PCs or Macs. Such relays sit inside a collection of racks that also hold 828 flashing Dekatron valves — gas-filled counting tubes used in the early days of computing rather than the transistors of modern electronics. [Could the Computer Age Have Begun in Victorian England?]

“The restoration was quite a challenge, requiring work with components like valves, relays and paper tape readers that are rarely seen these days and are certainly not found in modern computers,” said Delwyn Holroyd, a volunteer at TNMOC.

Running the computer requires about 1,500 watts of power — roughly equivalent to the power consumption of a modern hairdryer. By comparison, a laptop might use just 50 watts (1,000 watts being the equivalent of a kilowatt).

The computer does not convert calculations to the modern binary computer code consisting of ones and zeroes. Instead, the Dekatron valves each hold 10 gas-filled tubes that can each be activated as part of its decimal counting system.

Clattering paper readers and printers surround the computer to create a sound more like a roomful of typewriters than the quiet, whirring fans of modern computers.

Harwell Dekatron first served in the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment that represented the U.K.’s main center for nuclear research from the end of World War II through the 1990s. But the computer had become redundant by 1957 and ended up as a teaching computer at the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Technical College until its retirement in 1973.

The computer joins other relics of the early computing age at The National Museum of Computing, such as a rebuilt Colossus computer originally made by the Allies to break Nazi codes during World War II.

http://www.livescience.com/24918-oldest-digital-computer-reboot.html

 

Jonah Falcon: World’s Largest Penis

On By A.P.In Jonah Falcon, Penis, World Records, World's largest penisLeave a comment

 

 

Jonah Falcon is something of a celebrity in his home city of New York for one very big reason: he is the owner of the world’s largest penis.

Measuring eight inches when flaccid and an impressive 13.5 inches when erect, the 41-year-old’s XL asset hit the headlines recently when the huge bulge in his trousers caused a security alert at San Francisco airport.

Today the well-endowed American told This Morning that the experience was nothing new for him and that he doesn’t see his over-sized appendage as anything special anymore.

He said: ‘I was amused. What was the worst that was going to happen? Would I have to pull it out for them?

‘I have been doing that all my life. It was more annoying that I had a two hour delay.’

Jonah, who is 5ft 9 and has size ten feet, realised from a young age that he was different from the other boys.

The average length of a flaccid male organ measures in at 3-4 inches; Jonah’s is double that at a staggering 8 inches in length.

Depending on temperature, his penis can grow up to 13.5 inches when erect, something that has often taken his friends by surprise.

He said: ‘I went to a mostly Jewish school, and I was the only one who was uncircumsised so I always thought that was what my classmates were fascinated by.’

It wasn’t under the age of nineteen that Jonah began putting his proud parts to the test.

‘I was pretty promiscuous. I am an actor and an only child so very much a show-off.

‘At baseball camp, people made a big deal out of it so then I just went hog wild,’ he said.

Up until the age of 25, Jonah was ruled by his surprisingly large penis, sleeping with lots of men and women: ‘I was trying to boost my own self-esteem and when I learnt that then I crashed and got burnt out, gaining weight I stopped caring.’

When it comes to relationships, Jonah, who has been single since 1996, finds that the women who stick around the longest are the older, more experienced one’s.

‘They have been on that road before, they have evolved beyond sex and are looking for something beyond that.’ he said.

And as for his sex life, he insists there are no complications.

‘I am extremely into foreplay.

‘I am a performer, when the other person gets excited and enjoys then I am happy.

‘I do have to be turned on, patience is the key, don’t expect me to get up immediately,’ he said.

And his hidden ‘talent’ has sparked worldwide curiosity: celebrities often call to ask him about it and Jonah has received lots of offers to join the porn industry which he continues to decline: ‘I can’t perform in public, I wear tight jeans but I won’t do anything in front of other people.’

He often has people stopping him in the street, but admits that’s because he enjoys wrapping his penis around his leg and wearing tight cycling shorts to make it all the more prominent.

And whilst Jonah has received a lot of attention, he is worried that it may actually have a negative effect.

‘I worry that it might cost me work. As an actor, do you think I’d ever work for Disney?

‘I do these shows because I enjoy talking and I fancy myself as very intelligent but in back of my head I think what am I doing this for?

‘There’s a very fine line between exploitation and prostitution and I concern myself with that; I think I have been on the right side.’

‘Having things come easy has made me lazy. I have just started putting effort in.

‘I am moving forward and may be older, but it’s better late than never, I feel like a teenager that is suddenly becoming adult.’

And asked would he change anything about himself and his headline grabbing trouser department he insists absolutely not.

‘This is me. When I look down on myself I don’t see anything special but I still enjoy having something special, everyone does.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2199227/Jonah-Falcon-13-5-inches-living-worlds-biggest-penis.html

New World’s Shortest Man Declared Yesterday

On By A.P.In World RecordsLeave a comment

 

 

 

 A 72-year-old Nepalese man who is about the size of a toddler on Sunday became the world’s shortest person ever recorded.

A doctor and Guinness World Records official measured Chandra Bahadur Dangi to confirm his height of 21.5 inches (54.6 centimeters).

Guinness official Craig Glenday presented Dangi with two certificates for being the world’s shortest living man and the world’s shortest person recorded in Guinness’ 57-year history.

“I am very happy. Now I want to travel across Nepal and to foreign countries,” Dangi told reporters afterward.

He said he has no desire to get married or have a family of his own, but would like to meet the prime minister of Nepal soon.

Dangi lives in a remote mountain village, Rhimkholi, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Katmandu, with his youngest brother and his family. His five brothers are all average height.

Before being measured in the capital, Katmandu, on Saturday, he had never seen a doctor and his relatives say he has never been seriously ill or had any injuries. The doctors who saw him at the clinic also found no immediate health problems. His family is not sure when he stopped growing.

Because of his height, he has never worked outside the house, doing only household chores.

He has a normal sized head and regularly shaves, but his body is small. He is able to walk and climb small stairs. He eats mainly rice and vegetables, and occasionally meat, but in small portions.

Dangi takes the shortest man record from Junrey Balawing of the Philippines, who is 23.5 inches (60 centimeters) tall. He also beat the record of Gul Mohammed of India as the shortest adult human to have their height verified by Guinness. Mohammed, who died in 1997, was 22.5 inches (57 centimeters) tall.

Since Dangi’s village is so remote, it was only recently that Dangi gained notice. A forest contractor cutting timber in the village met him and told local media.

Another Nepalese man, Khagendra Thapa Magar, was declared the world’s shortest man at 26.4 inches (67 centimeters) before Balawing took over the title in June on his 18th birthday.

In December, Guinness recognized an Indian teenager as the world’s shortest woman. Jyoti Amge is 24.7 inches (62.8 centimeters) tall and wants to attend university and become a Bollywood star.

Aside from a Guinness certificate, the titles don’t come with any cash award.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46539079

New World’s Shortest Woman

On By A.P.In World RecordsLeave a comment

 

Standing just over 2 feet tall, Jyoti Amge of Nagpur, India, was confirmed Friday as the world’s shortest living woman.

The title previously belonged to Bridgette Jordan, 22, of the United States, who measures 2 feet, 3 inches tall.

The record for the shortest woman in history remains with Pauline Musters, who died in 1895 at 2 feet tall even.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/16/world/asia/india-shortest-woman/index.html?hpt=hp_c2