Useless World Records

The Rekord-Klub SAXONIA "was founded in 1988. There is a strict rule that every member must be a world record breaker. At the moment, our club members have established more than 100 world records like largest bicycle, longest noodle or computer game marathon."

A few of my favorites:

Domino Stacking as illustrated, and the similarly inspired World Record for Number of Matches Stacked on a Bottleneck - hint: as of 2002 it was ten thousand.

Longest Gumwrapper Chain - yup, you guessed it - 44,378 feet, composed of 1,036,574 gum wrappers.

Coin Snatching - the art of putting many coins on your elbow and then catching them all with the same hand. As of 1993, the record was 328. On one elbow. Into one hand.

Not to mention the world record for card holding - being, as of 1994, 326 cards held "in a fan in such way that the value and colour of each card is clearly visible on one side of the card."

There's something quintessentially junkly about these record-worthy achievements. It makes one think of the world as the stuff upon which records are made of. Talk, for example, to Ron Jones who works with handicapped kids and created a book called "Unusual World Records" with illustrations of achievements such as: the world's highest inner tube tower, the longest walk using inner tube stilts, the longest belly balance on an inner tube, and the longest roll of an individual inside a bunch of inner tubes.