Extra! Extra! …No, seriously, could I trouble you for a rake? (nathanmac87/Wikimedia Commons)
Almost everyone can name at least one Guinness World Record: Tallest Living Person, a Turkish farmer who measures up at eight-foot-two/251 cm and Shortest Living Person at two-foot-one/62.8 cm (yes, they’ve met!); Longest Nails (Female) extending 42 feet, 10.4 inches (no statistics provided on trimming attempts by family, friends and/or salon professionals); Longest Car, a limousine built out of six Cadillac Eldorados, with a swimming pool inside and a helipad on top.
The car, conceived and built by Hollywood Car Guy Jay Ohrberg, originally captured Longest Car in 1986. After years of misuse, it was restored to its former useless glory and made even longer! (Vetatur Fumare/Wikimedia Commons)
And, of course, who could forget the record for Fastest Time to Ignite Five Targets by Squirting Milk From the Eye (34.9 seconds as of 2013)? We declined to look into this further.
Well, as it turns out, we could not stop ourselves from looking into that further. Though, to our knowledge, milk is not an accelerant, and we were unable to validate the use of “ignite,” we did find that no matter how you define the feat, it was achieved by then-22-year-old Brandon “Youngblood” Kee (which we suspect he named himself—who would plausibly name him “Youngblood,” the council of eye-milk-igniting elders?) after he saw it performed on the “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” TV show. After grabbing the Guinness record, he decided to take his special ability to America’s Got Talent, where he was buzzed out in the audition round. At any rate, belated congratulations and all the best to him in his “Middle-aged-blood” phase of life.
We hope he has not found himself saying the dreaded words, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” No, wait—“You’ll shoot out your eye!” (Direct Media/Stocksnap)
Anyway, one of the newest records—and certainly among the most festive (is there a Guinness World Record for Most Festive World Record?)—was set in April by students and faculty at St. Stephen’s School in the city of Perth, on Australia’s west coast, in celebration of the school’s 40th anniversary: the record for the most people simultaneously firing confetti cannons—2,013, to be precise. Participants in the event handily snatched the record from the only 1,116 attendees of the 2022 Annual Expo of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions in (obviously) Orlando, Florida.
We're talking way, WAY more confetti than shown here. (Holly Cheng/Wikimedia Commons)
The new record generated quite a bit of positive news coverage for the school in Perth, partly because Australia’s population is only 26 million people—about 1/13 that of the United States—and news hours are not devoted primarily to mass shootings. The virtually immediate record-busting by the St. Stephen’s students will doubtless set off a race to the top of the record books (…of confetti cannons)—sports fans, please be vigilant, keep your air horns on you and remain aware of your surroundings at all times.
