10 Ridiculously Stupid World Records

World records inspire us to strive harder, and make something more of ourselves. But in the last several years, they have degenerated into freak shows – obscure records that few people remember, feats that have no serious bearing on the advancement of any aspect of our culture. In the end, they just give already-dumb people very bad ideas to beat boredom.

These stupid world records are compiled based on inherent danger, and are in no particular order.

Jackie Bibby holds this record as of 2009, having held 11 full-grown snakes by their rattling tails for 10 seconds. He then spat them out and dashed away without being bitten. It goes without saying that if the snakes are rattling, they’re not happy.



The risk involved is obvious. Snakes don’t care if you’re breaking a record. Sooner or later, some numbskull is going to try this with black mambas. Why? Because they’re famously deadly, of course. You can train almost any animal to be somewhat more tame than it would be in the wild, but you must never forget that it is still a wild and unpredictable animal, and if it simply isn’t in the mood to be around you, it may attack. But some fool somewhere around the world is working up the nerve as we speak, on the notion that 11 snakes really isn’t all that many.





This is also a record for the only airplane eaten. Michel Lotito is a legend in the realm of weird records and abilities. He was able to chew up almost anything and eat it. He demonstrated his ability to chew up light bulbs, razor blades, glass bottles, and lots of other sharp, not-so-nutritious objects. He still had to eat regular food to live, and his hobby wore his teeth down to nubs, but he refused to stop. He was born with a stomach lining over twice as thick as normal, which is why he did not die of peritonitis.



His most famous feat came in the 1990s, when he spent two years eating a Cessna 150. He first had to break it up with a sledgehammer, acetylene torch, and bolt cutter, but did bite most of the glass parts directly off the plane, chew them up, and swallow them. He passed every single metal and glass part through his system in the normal way, including the engine. He even ate the upholstered leather seats, and the tires.

He died “of natural causes” in 2007 at 57 years old. Perhaps no one would dare attempt to eat a larger plane, but there are plenty of raisin cakes out there who think they might have what it takes to chew up a razor blade and swallow it without harm.







This one we may blame on the Guinness Book authors themselves, as well as Dr. Eric Brader, since Matthew McKnight would probably have chosen not to be involved if he’d had the choice. McKnight was struck by a car traveling 70 miles per hour on the night of 26 October 2001, outside Monroeville, Pennsylvania. He had exited his ambulance to help victims of another accident on Interstate highway 376, at the peak of a sharp curve, when another motorist negotiated the curve too quickly, found McKnight in his headlights, and could not stop fast enough.



McKnight was struck in the left side and hurled over the highway, the median, the other highway, and a wire fence before landing like a rag doll in a freshly plowed cornfield. The impact shattered his pelvis, tailbone, and left leg, and the landing broke his right shoulder and dislocated both. He spent 2 weeks in a body cast in intensive care, and 80 days in rehab, during which time, Brader, an emergency room physician, brought him paperwork to sign, attesting to having been found 118 feet away from the point of impact.







You don’t get a nickname like “the Village Idiot” for no reason. Todd DeFazio enjoys setting and breaking world records, and is determined to set and/or break more than anyone else, which would be another record (one that could not be reliably proven). His most idiotic display occurred on 6 July 2010, when he taped bottle rockets and roman candles, 15 total, around his clothed legs, chest, and bare head, and then had them all lighted at once.



The fireworks were fairly low-powered, and he lost no appendages, nor did he suffer any burns. But this is not an expensive record to try for, and tons of imbeciles every year around Halloween, Christmas, New Years, and July 4th get drunk and try holding onto firecrackers. These are still manufactured with sufficient power to blow off a finger, or at least cause 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to break DeFazio’s record with more powerful fireworks.







This moronic record currently belongs to Donna Simpson, of New Jersey, USA. She weighed 602 pounds (273.5 kg) in 2010, when she set up a website where people could pay money to watch her eat junk food. She determined to break the record for world’s heaviest woman within 2 years, and proceeded to eat 20,000 calories a day while moving as little as possible. Her 2010 Christmas dinner alone was 30,000 calories and consisted on 2 whole turkeys, 2 hams, a roast, and over 30 pounds of vegetables. She was aiming for a weight of 1,000 lbs, and her weekly grocery bills ranged from $580 to $750.



She has given up the record as of 2011 (probably for financial reasons), and gone on a diet so she won’t die before raising her children. There is no need to explain why breaking her record is a bad idea.






Losing weight, preferably fast, is something we’d all like to do, and it’s definitely a healthy decision – but you must not try to set a speed record in the process. Rosalie Bradford is legendary for her world record weight loss of 917 pounds in less than 3 years. She lost the first 420 pounds in the first year. She began her diet and exercise regimen on the personal advice of Richard Simmons, and at the time she weighed 1,199 pounds (544 kg). She finally reached a weight of 282 pounds, but died at the ripe old age of 63 from heart failure. This is also what happened to Oliver Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame, though he exacerbated his bad health with cigarettes.



Losing weight this quickly requires starving oneself to begin with, then exercising without proper energy consumption. Fat is burned off, but so is muscle. This places inordinate stress on the heart – more stress, even, than it suffers during obesity. The best diet and exercise plans put a person on a slower but very consistent pace of weight loss: 10 to 20 pounds per month until you reach your desired figure is ideal. Forget this record, and set a different one.







John Evans of England is now famous for his balancing car stunt. He has set the record many times over for balancing an entire car on his head for various lengths of time. His record is 33 seconds, and he offers 1,000 GBP to anyone who can top it. Money talks, and there are lots of people around the world intent on besting him. The car he held up was a 352 pound (160 kg) Mini. Evans is 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 343 pounds, and has a neck 24 inches in circumference. His neck strength is the only key to his freak ability, but even if someone else has a sufficiently strong neck, the weight of the car can fracture the skull. Evans uses a folded up towel as padding, but the slightest tip in any direction could bring the car down on top of him. So far, that hasn’t happened, but given enough chances, it will to someone.




Olivier Favre has dived from 177 feet above the surface of the water, and currently holds the record for the highest pool dive. Dana Kunze, who is regarded by many as the greatest high diver ever, set and broke the record several times, achieving a personal best of 172 feet. The diver climbs a guy-wired ladder, jumps off, and performs somersaults and other acrobatics before landing feet first in the pool. Randy Dickinson broke his left leg diving from 174 feet 8 inches. The pool he jumped into was 15 feet deep, and he still struck the bottom. 



All anyone would need to set this record is the stupidity required to jump off a roof. Alcohol could easily remove any acrophobia. People have died performing much dumber stunts. In short, “defying death” is personification at its least intelligent. And on the subject of alcohol consumption, read on.







The record for highest measured BAC is believed to belong to an unidentified man from Wroclaw, Poland, who mortally injured himself when he crashed his car headfirst into a tree in 1995. There is very little information on him to be found on the Internet, but he was taken to a hospital, where the triage unit recorded a BAC of 1.48%. Death is possible at about 0.3%, while 0.08% is the legal limit for operating a motor vehicle in the United States. Death is likely after 0.5% BAC, and when the medics saw the reading, they thought their equipment had malfunctioned. They performed the test five times, always receiving about the same number. The man died after 2 hours from exsanguination, but not alcohol poisoning. The doctors could not stop his blood loss because the alcohol had dilated his vessels and thinned his blood.



Many people don’t need their arms twisted to be willing to take a drink. Alcoholism is a disease, and any alcoholic sufficiently depressed to consider suicide may well try for this record. The record’s existence is a highly dangerous influence on those whose mindsets are already volatile. The tree, however, is still doing fine.



This video will make anyone cringe, man or woman. You’re probably asking yourself, “Why in the world would anyone even think of this as a record that needs to be set?” Kirby Roy is a high-ranking black belt (or red belt) in a karate discipline that emphasizes “combat ki.” Combat ki is not a mystery. Boxers are famously resilient to punches, precisely because they withstand them day after day for years. Football players are well known to tackle and become injured, then heal, and do it again, until they’re very difficult to injure further.



The most well known example of combat ki is displayed by muay thai kickboxers who roll glass bottles or baseball bats up and down their shins hours a day for years. This pulverizes the nerve fibers between the shinbone and the skin, and causes microfractures to the bone. These fractures are not large enough to disable the leg, and when they heal, the body compensates by adding extra calcium to the break site. Over time, the bone becomes harder than concrete, and without functioning nerves in front of it, the kickboxer is able to kick through a baseball bat and walk it off.



The same principle works for Roy’s pelvis, which has endured thousands of full-force groin kicks over the years, and is now thicker and harder than a normal pelvis. His testicles have suffered as much damage as the nerves in front of kickboxers’ shins, and now no longer register pain to his brain. The television program “Sports Science” put him to the test via Jesse “Justice’ Smith, a 6 foot, 8 inch martial artist, who proceeded to shin-kick Roy in the groin with 1,100 pounds of force, lifting him completely off the floor. An untrained target would suffer a broken pelvis from a strike this powerful.



Roy took the kick without any apparent indication of pain, and was given a clean bill of health at the hospital. Nevertheless, organ tissue does not toughen like bones or callused skin. Roy could easily have suffered testicular ruptures, which can kill by pain and shock, or blood loss. This is not to mention that shattered testicles cannot be put back together, and must be removed. Roy is married with children, and claims an active sex life. You might think no one would dare try to top this record, but you must never underestimate the breadth of human stupidity. It would be relatively difficult to set up a record-breaking kick, since few people can kick so powerfully, but you can rest assured that some idiot somewhere is thinking about it.