10 Scientists Who Enabled Brains to Survive Bodily Death
10 “Unchangeable” U.S. Legal Doctrines That Were Overturned
10 Modern Cities That Are Actually Built on Ancient Ruins
10 Formerly Controversial Olympic Sports That Became Mainstream
10 Brave Royals Killed in Battle
10 Infamous Con Men from History You Should Know About
10 Reasons the Titanic Sank Besides the Iceberg
10 Outrageous Vehicles and Eccentric Drivers
10 Filmmakers Who Attacked Their Audience
10 Surprisingly Dark Moments in Seemingly Benign Books
10 Scientists Who Enabled Brains to Survive Bodily Death
10 “Unchangeable” U.S. Legal Doctrines That Were Overturned
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Jamie Frater
Head Editor
Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.
More About Us10 Modern Cities That Are Actually Built on Ancient Ruins
10 Formerly Controversial Olympic Sports That Became Mainstream
10 Brave Royals Killed in Battle
10 Infamous Con Men from History You Should Know About
10 Reasons the Titanic Sank Besides the Iceberg
10 Outrageous Vehicles and Eccentric Drivers
10 Filmmakers Who Attacked Their Audience
Top 10 Record-Breaking Body Parts
The ten titleholders featured on this list exemplify that size – for better, for worse, and for just plain gross – certainly does matter. But while having something considered the largest of its kind in the world may have its advantages – pride, prestige, even fortune – being the biggest isn’t necessary the best.
While some of the distinctions in this collection may seem enviable, there are a variety of reasons why trading places with any of these folks would be a burden rather than a blessing. And as we’ll see, big isn’t always beautiful, either.
10 World Records That Have Never Been Broken
10 Heads
The Guinness World of Records is surprisingly vague[1] about exactly whose noggin is heads and tails above the competition. It simply states that the largest skull ever documented in medical literature belonged to a UK man with a cranial capacity of 1,980 cm³ (120 in³). Though that certainly is a lot of headspace – average human cranial capacity ranges from 950–1,800 cm³, depending on age and body size – the entry does not reveal the age of the skull, which is important since human brain sizes have been shrinking since the Stone Age.[2]
Guinness mentions that the skull’s dimensions were normal, meaning its extraordinary size couldn’t be attributed to disease. This is important, because several disorders can lead to an abnormally large skull. The most glaring recent example is the case of Mrityunjay Das, who suffered from a rare condition known as hydrocephalus. After Das’ head became so large that it was considered the world’s largest, doctors removed 3.7 LITERS – nearly a full gallon – of fluid from around his skull, reducing his head’s size from 96cm to 70cm.
Perhaps the most incredible part of the story is Das’ age: shown in these difficult to look at photos,[3] at the time of the surgery he was just seven months old.
9 Tails
Oh…my…god, Becky. It should shock absolutely nobody that the person with the most prominent posterior in the world lives in America, a land whose recent culinary contributions include a fried chicken sandwich with donuts as the bun.[4]
Los Angeles woman Mikel Ruffinelli lays (and assumedly sits) claim to the biggest butt in the world,[5] a badunkadunk-worthy 8.25 feet around. A svelte 5′ 4″ and 420 lbs, the 39-year-old appears in a documentary called World’s Biggest Hips that one would imagine was filmed with a wide-angle camera. A happily married mother of four, Mikel insists she is completely healthy, and sees no reason to slim down. Her sofa could not be reached for comment.
However, a challenger has emerged to give Mikel a run for her rumpus: an aptly-named Chicago native, Sarah Massey,[6] has laid claim to Mikel’s steel-reinforced throne with a massive moneymaker measuring an unofficial seven feet across. Among other ass-related accomplishments, Massey sports size 10XL trousers and once cracked a toilet bowl by sitting on it.
For Mikel, Massey and other fat bottom girls, their behemoth backsides have done nothing to scare away the meatlovin’ menfolk. Per noted derriere enthusiast Sir Mix-a-Lot, many a man ascribes to the laureate-worthy notion of “my anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun.”[7] Mikel’s husband, Reggie, jokes that he has a license to operate heavy equipment. Wear a helmet, my friend.
8 Arms*
Ah, the asterisk. That doubt-denoting athletic add-on unfairly bestowed on Roger Maris when he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, and very, very fairly associated with steroid cheats like Mark Maguire and Barry Bonds who’ve seen bested Maris’ single-season mark.
When your biceps measurement is more commonly associated to a waist measurement, suspicions will abound. At an astounding 31 inches around, the arms of Massachusetts man Moustafa Ismail[8] are so incredibly bulky that the Guinness World of Records, after initially granting him the “world’s largest” distinction, has since reneged following accusations that Ismail injected his Popeye-esque arms with synthol – an artificial bulk-creating substance also known as “Pump n’ Pose.” At least Ismail has a ready-made porn name.
To Guinness and other doubters, Ismail says “kiss my asterisk.” The bodybuilder says he did it au naturelle by imbibing an ungodly seven pounds of protein, nine pounds of carbohydrates and three gallons of water each day. To sculpt his record-setting arms, he works out for two hours each day and lifts as much as 600 pounds.
In addition to being temporary recordholders, Ismail ‘s arms may also be the last: Guinness no longer accepts claims for largest upper arm circumference, stating too many evidentiary variables exist to indisputably declare such a benchmark.
7 Penis
You’d think Roberto Esquivel Cabrera would be a happy man. After all, the veritable human tripod has a nineteen inch penis, the world’s largest.
But his huge phallus is actually a huge problem. For starters, according to Cabrera he’s virtually a virgin. One woman was too intimidated for intercourse, while a braver soul took the plentiful plunge briefly, only to find it “too beaucoup”.[9]
His main vein also causes pain: Cabrera frequently gets urinary tract infections because his pee won’t make it all the way out, and he has to wrap his wang up under his pants to keep it from rubbing raw with chafe. In fact, he says he can’t even work a normal job and has collected disability from the Mexican government, which apparently pays for balls but not walls.[10]
However, Cabrera’s claim to world’s foremost cocksman is a prickly one: New York resident Jonah Falcon, whose member is a measly 13.5 inches, points out that Cabrera used weights to artificially elongate his foreskin. In a terrifically-titled piece called “Stretching the Truth”,[11] doctors back up Falcon’s claims, even noting that Cabrera could have a normal sex life if he got what assumedly would be the world’s largest circumcision.
6 Testicles
Since we did the frank we might as well do the beans. Breaking this record really takes some huge balls, and Horace Owiti Opiyo[12] has them – or at least had them.
After the Kenyan boy contracted elephantiasis in his genitals, his testicles ballooned to about 20 times larger than the average adult male. His sac was the size of… well, a sack. Combined, Opiyo’s twig n’ berries weighed more than 11 pounds
It turns out having such gargantuan gonads is no fun. The pain became unbearable, and eventually Opiyo was unable to walk or even sit (he could still hang out though). Opiyo suspected foul play: “I told my grandmother that I have been infected by a disease, but I’m not sure what it is,” he said. “It could be a curse. I knew this was not god’s work, but the devil’s.”
Fortunately, Opiyo was able to exorcise Satan from his shorts. Though he was unable to pay for the desperately-needed surgery, a neighbor posted pictures of his genitals on Facebook (#classy), and the county governor’s wife, assumedly a mix of impressed and horrified, saw them and got him to a hospital.
Buried deep in his scrotum, scans found that Opiyo ‘s testicles were completely healthy, but the surrounding tissue was badly swollen. Despite the risk of death due to blood loss, Opiyo’s surgery was a ball-busting success, and he woke to find a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulde… um, knees.
10 Records Nobody Would Want To Break
5 Breasts
Annie Hawkins-Turner’s cup runneth over because her 102ZZZ-cups[13] also runneth over. The Guinness recordholder for largest natural breasts has made a living monetizing her mountainous melons for more than two decades.
Hawkins started developing breasts at age five, and by nine they were a size 36D. They currently weigh a walloping 65 pounds each and, remarkably, are still growing even though she’s in her early 60s. This is owed to a rare condition called gigantomastia, which involves slow, progressive growth of breast tissue indefinitely. At the last official measurement, her chest was 70 inches around,[14] with a whopping 43 inches of that being boob, per her “under breast” measurement.
After initially being shy about her super-sized stack, Hawkins launched a modeling career and eventually a successful website where fetishists pay to peek her peaks. To date, she’s earned well over a million dollars using one of the greatest stage names ever: Norma Stitz.[15]
Still, sometimes it’s mo’ mammary mo’ problems. “I can only drive a 4×4 and need a larger airplane seat,” Hawkins says, adding that she has to be “extra careful walking down stairs.” She can’t sleep on her back since her own boobs could crush her, and the mother of two wasn’t able to breastfeed her children for fear of smothering them. That’s a lot of wasted milk.
4 Eyes
Officially, “eye-popping” is an adjective that means “astonishing or thrilling.” But perhaps its definition should be changed to disgusting, because Chicago resident Kim Goodman can pop her eyes out nearly half an inch from the rest of her head… and it’s really, really gross.[16]
Goodman holds the record for farthest eyeball protrusion – a distinction she earned during a most disturbing “head-to-head” competition. On command, she can bulge both eyes so far from their sockets that they seem likely to fall on the floor.
Goodman discovered her talent as a child, when she was smacked over the head with a hockey mask. Like a surprised cartoon character,[17] her eyes came out of their sockets and protruded from her face. Since then, Goodman has been able to repeat the feat whenever she wishes – and sometimes when she doesn’t, including every time she yawns.
Exophthalmos, also known as proptosis, is the medical term for bulging eyeballs. It can affect one or both eyes and is most often caused by thyroid eye disease. Fortunately, Goodman has not reported any such adverse medical effects of her protruding peepers, other than making others nauseous.
3 Flesh Tunnel
Now that I have your attention, get your mind out of the gutter and into – or rather, through – this human pincushion of a man’s earlobes.[18] At more than four inches wide, Kalawelo Kaiwi holds the Guinness world record for “largest flesh tunnel,” a category left anatomically vague should Kaiwi or anyone else choose to puncture a gaping, stretched-out hole in his or her navel, breasts or scrotum.
According to Professor Victoria Pitts-Taylor of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, whose name and title just scream “alt street cred,” gaping flesh tunnels are associated with counterculture. They are, she says, “a slightly more committed body art than temporary practices or ear piercing. The more you stretch the skin, the more commitment you are expressing to a countercultural look.”
Counterculturally or otherwise, Kaiwi looks… straight-up scary. His loopy lobes are roughly the diameter of a teacup – wide enough to easily accommodate a clenched fist. A tattoo and body-mod artist by trade (surprise, surprise), Kaiwi also flaunts an eclectic variety of tatts and piercings and, testament to his sanity, subdermal horns and a bifurcated tongue that he split himself using dental floss. His nostrils also are stretched and, to complete his dream-son-in-law appeal, he had bolt holes implanted on his forehead on which he screws spikes.
2 Teeth
In 2018 a man came into the office of Dr Max Lukas, a dentist in Offenbach, Germany, complaining of excruciating mouth pain. X-Rays showed that the patient, Croatia-born Mijo Vodopija,[19] had a thoroughly decayed tooth – and quite a large one at that – which needed to get yanked because it was causing his upper jaw to swell significantly.
It wasn’t until after the extraction that Dr. Lukas suspected he literally had something bigger on his hands. The cruddy canine wasn’t just brown from rot but also just plain enormous. With the consent of Vodopija, he filed a report in a medical journal and had the tooth reviewed by an independent expert, which begs the question “expert in what?”
It took over a year for what became a very well-traveled tooth to be officially deemed the longest ever recorded. Measuring 1.46 inches, it was just 5 millimeters longer than the previous recordholder, meaning that Vodopija literally earned the distinction by the skin of his teeth. Dr. Lukas reportedly still has the tooth, confirming both the time-tested rule of finders-keepers and the fact that nobody else could possibly want it.
1 Feet
Whoever breaks Orlando Rodríguez Hernández’s record will, by his very nature, have some big shoes to fill: the Venezuelan basketball player sports an astonishing US size 26 sneaker. Hernández’s feet measure nearly 16 inches in length,[20] just slightly larger than those of Sultan Kösen, who at 8’3” is the world’s tallest person.
In a nation where finding basic groceries is challenging, it’s understandable that Hernández can’t exactly stroll down to the nearest mall and pick up a fresh pair of kicks. In fact, he’d have that problem anywhere, as his shoes are more than ten full sizes larger than the biggest most retailers carry. As an oversized child in an underdeveloped nation, he often wore sandals made of old tires and fabric to walk to school. Today, he gets his footwear from a Germany-based custom shoemaker that jumped at the publicity perks of fitting Hernández’s record-holding feet.
While Hernández is the current recordholder, his feet are by no means the largest ever. That distinction belongs to American-born Robert Wadlow, who at a towering 8’11” was the tallest man ever recorded, and whose 18.5-inch feet required a size 37AA shoe. Tragically, Wadlow’s feet played a role in his early demise: what started as an unassuming blister became irreparably infected, and he died at age 22.[21] Given the medical condition that made him stand out (and up) from everyone else – pituitary gigantism – most believe that neither Robert nor his feet were done growing, meaning his height likely would have eclipsed nine feet.
10 People Who Set Disturbing World Records
About The Author: Listverse author’s page: https://listverse.com/lvauthor/Christopher%20Dale/