Real-Life Aquaman Can Hold His Breath Underwater for 22 Minutes

In 2010, Danish freediver Stig Severinsen  jumped into a pool filled with sharks and held his breath for 20 minutes and 10 seconds, breaking the previous Guinness World Record for the longest time breath held voluntarily. Two years later, the fearless Stig did it again, somehow breaking his own remarkable record by holding his breath for a staggering 22 minutes. If there’s such a thing as a real-life Aquaman, it’s this guy.

Severinsen – who has a Ph. D. in medicine and a master’s degree in biology, is known for participating in the most extreme challenges, including swimming in freezing water. Before setting his first breath holding world record, he swam 236 feet – about 72 meters (14.5 more meters than Wim Hof, the previous record holder), in the below-zero waters of the North Sea. After taking a few breaths of air, he dived feet first through a hole carved in the ice. As soon as he was in the water, he started swimming to the next hole wearing only in his signature blue Speedos. The triangle-shaped hole was 72 meters away and there wasn’t another escape route mid-way, which made the challenge extremely dangerous. After reaching his destination in just 96 seconds, the 40-year-old daredevil lingered in the freezing hole a little longer, as if to prove the cold didn’t affect him very much. You’d think that after swimming that distance in heart-stopping water he immediately jumped out to find some warm clothes, but our hero just stood there with his elbows on the ice, smiling and thanking everyone as if he was in a hot tub or somewhere in the Bahamas.

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Cyclist Rides Bicycle Backwards for 24 Hours, Covers 337 Kilometers

Australian Andrew Hellinga recently set a new Guinness Record after riding his bicycle for 337km backwards in a 24 hour challenge to raise money for the poverty-stricken children of Zambia.

Hellinga started the marathon on October 7th at 6 a.m. and made just one brief stop to mark the 182 km milestone that made him the new Guinness world record holder for the longest distance traveled while cycling backwards. “I had to stop for a quick rest and to share the excitement with my support crew,” he said. After a quick celebration, he continued this difficult challenge hoping to make it to 300km within the 24-hour limit. Not only did he pull through and reached the 300km milestone, but he cycled for another few dozen kilometers, covering a staggering distance of 337km.  After withstanding the ever-changing weather, he ended the lengthy ride with a smile on his face.

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Guy Runs 26-Mile Marathon Backward While Juggling

Most people couldn’t run a marathon if their life depended on it, but world-record juggler Joe Salter ran the whole 26.2-mile Quad-Cities Marathon backward, while doing what he does best, juggling.

32-year old Joe Salter can practice his juggling skills pretty much anywhere. In the past, he swam a half-mile in the Gulf of Mexico, doing the backstroke while juggling three balls, juggled for 16.2 miles on a bike and ran and juggled for four miles. He also holds the world records for the fastest time to run a mile backward while juggling (7 minutes, 32 seconds) and fastest juggling triathlon (1 hour, 57 minutes), but he was hungry for a Guinness World Record, so he challenged himself to run the entire Quad-Cities Marathon, in Illinois, backward, while juggling. Unfortunately, Guinness rules are very strict and for Joe’s unique feat to qualify as a record, every second of the race had to be recorded, which was impossible as videotaping is prohibited along several miles of the course that run through the Rock Island Arsenal. Although slightly disappointed, Salter found an upside to the whole situation. “I actually feel better, not having the stress,” he said before the race, and indeed the lack of added pressure helped him finish the entire 26.2-mile marathon in just 5 hours and 51 minutes.

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Man Swims over 2 Kilometers All Tied Up in a Bag

Jane Petkov, a 59-year-old Bulgarian man, tried to set a new Guinness record by swimming across a lake while wrapped in a bag with his arms and legs tied up. Known as “amphibian man” in his native country, Petkov says he relies on concentration and a special breathing technique to pull off the amazing feat.

The record-breaking attempt took place on September 10, on Lake Orhid, in Macedonia, and had Jane Petkov jumping out of a boat in the middle of the water trying to somehow make his way to shore. His arms and legs were tied once before putting on the thick bag, and again over the bag, to make sure he couldn’t use them during his death-defying feat. What’s even more astonishing is doctors who examined him before the challenge found he was severely anemic, which, given his age, made the task even more dangerous. Nevertheless, on the morning of September 10, the amphibian man jumped in the cold water of Lake Orhid and began to swim on his back like a dolphin.

Jane-Petkov

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Arizona Man Builds World’s Smallest Roadworthy Car

Growing up, Phoenix-based Austin Coulson was always fascinated by all the cool automotive records he found in the yearly Guinness Book of Records, and dreamed of one day having his name mentioned in the famous publication. He recently got his wish, after building the world’s smallest roadworthy car.

29-year-old Austin Coulson says he developed a passion for tinkering with mechanical stuff very early in life. As a young boy, he used to  ride bicycles with his friends, and always fond some parts to add or remove. When he turned 16. Austin bought his first car, a Bronco with a blown transmission. So he bought a repair manual and learned from scratch how take the thing apart and put it back together. It wasn’t easy, but he got the hang of it and he’s been building custom cars ever since. Two years ago, he saw a small go-kart with a car body on it, that made it look like a real miniature roadworthy vehicle. It got him thinking whether someone could really build such a small car and make it street legal. It also reminded Austin about his life-long dream of having his name in the Guinness Book of Records, so he started searching to see if there was already a record for the world’s smallest street-legal car. A guy from England held the record, but after seeing his creation, Coulson thought to himself “I can beat that”.

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Meet Asha Mandela, the Black Rapunzel Who Has the World’s Longest Dreadlocks

50-year-old Asha Zulu Mandela started growing her lovely dreadlocks 25 years ago, after moving from Trinidad Tobago to New York. Today she is known as “the Black Rapunzel” and holds the record for the world’s longest locks, which measure 19 feet, 6 inches long.

Soon after she settled in Brooklyn, New York, Asha Mandela started working as a nanny, spending most of her time in parks and playgrounds. Perming and styling her hair just wasn’t working very well with her hectic schedule, so she decided to go for an easier, more natural alternative. After careful consideration she started growing “locks, which didn’t sit too well with her family, especially her mother, who though it made her head look like “a riff-raff mop”. Not even Asha herself was sure she had made the right decision because her short hair made them look spiky. But as they grew, she fell in love with her new hairdo and even started referring to her hair as “my baby”. The years passed and her dreadlocks grew past floor length, but she didn’t realized how unique her natural hairstyle had become until about 5 years ago when people started complimenting her and asking all kinds of questions, like how long she had been growing the locks for, how long it took to wash and if she was featured in the Guinness Book of Records. That last one sparked her interest, so she reached out to Guinness and Ripley’s to make her record official.

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Meet Aevin Dugas, Proud Owner of the World’s Biggest Afro

Aevin Dugas a 38-year-old social worker from Louisiana, holds the Guinness Record for the largest natural afro hairstyle in the world, with a circumference measuring an incredible 4 feet 4 inches (1.32 m). The hairdo has taken over 14 years to grow to its current proportions, and although Aevin is really proud of it, she admits sometimes it can be pretty problematic.

At one point in her life, Aevin Dugas used all kinds of tricks to straighten her curly hair, until she realized that wasn’t what she really wanted. “As a woman you’re told that straight hair is beautiful hair. This is crazy,” she says “The afro is my natural hairstyle and there can’t be anything more beautiful than that”. 14 years ago, inspired by an old photo of her mother sporting an afro, she traded in her straight tresses for a big round hairdo and never looked back. Her hair just kept growing, and in 2010 she set a new world record for the world’s biggest afro, becoming an inspiration for black women to ditch relaxers and go natural. As you can expect, Aevin’s hair draws attention wherever she goes, and while most people just ask her if it’s real, some can’t resist touching it to see for themselves.

Aevin-Dugas

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World’s Largest Drum Set Includes 813 Pieces and It’s Still Growing

56-year-old Mark Temperato has spent the last 36 years assembling the world’s largest drum kit. The amazing instrument is made up of 813 individual pieces, including drums, cymbals and bells, and its creator needs an hour to hit every one of them.

Mark Temperato has always had a thing for drums. He has been building his custom drum set for the past 36 years, and he’s not planning on stopping anytime soon. A reverend at the Breath of Worship Church, in Lakeville, New York, Mark, who also goes by the name “RevM” has been using the popular musical instrument to “praise God” and get His word out “in a very different way”. Adding new pieces to his set every year, the amateur musician always thought he had the biggest drum kit in the world, but it wasn’t until his two sons, who are also drummers, prompted him to contact Guinness Records that he considered making the title official. Last year, RevM finally got his name mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records after managing to hit every one of the 340 drums and cymbals from a sitting or standing position without taking a step to either side. But the newly-obtained titled only fueled his obsession with drums even more, so he spent the last few months adding hundreds of new components to his set which currently numbers 813 different pieces.

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Real-Life Superhuman Blows Up Hot Water Bottles with His Nose

Here is a guy who can literally blow you away. Jemal Tkeshelashvili, from Georgia, is a superhuman with a very unique ability. He can blow up hot water bottles to the point where they explode, with his nose. Jemal currently holds the Guinness World Record for most hot water bottles burst with the nose in one minute.

What Jemal does might seem silly, but it’s actually quite extraordinary considering most people can barely blow up a latex balloon, let alone a thick rubber hot water bottle, with their nose. One might think it’s his lungs that do all the work, but tests have shown that his lungs are not much different than those of an average healthy person. He has good pulmonary volume, but it’s the force with which he’s capable of pushing out the air that makes him special. That means his strong intercostal and abdominal muscles push out all the air in his lungs really fast, creating enormous pressure. In 2009, the 23-year-old judo practitioner set a new record for most hot water bottles burst with the nose in one minute, managing to explode three of them, but th’s capable of much more impressive feats.

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World’s Longest Mustache Measures over Four Meters

Ram Singh Chauhan started growing his mustache in 1970, and hasn’t cut it since. Today it measures over 4.30 meters, and the proud Indian man from Rajasthan holds the Guinness record for World’s Longest Mustache.

The 58-year old says one of the secrets to impressive facial hair growth is starting early. “As you grow old your hormones grow weak, so the speed slows down,” Ram says, but even now he still adds a few centimeters to his mustache every year. He stopped shaving his mustache back in 1970, after being inspired by a fellow mustache enthusiast from Rajasthan, resuming to trimming the split ends every once in a while. In the early years Chauhan and his wife Asha used to fight over his abnormally long facial hair, because he used to take a long time to wash and groom it, and people stared at them every time they went out. But as soon as her husband started getting recognition for his efforts, she began to respect his commitment, and says she now considers the mustache part of the family and shares his pride in it. Thanks to his long mustache, Ram Singh Chauhan appeared in big movies like 1983’s “Octopussy”, starring Roger Moore, as well as numerous Bollywood productions. He has also traveled around the world, to show off his amazing whiskers.

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Meet Varya Akulova, the World’s Strongest Girl

Varya Akulova is one of those extraordinary human beings most people have never even heard of. Often referred to as “The World’s Strongest Girl”, Varya holds two Guinness records and is able to lift up to four times her own body weight.

Born in 1992, in the Ukrainian mining town of Krivoy Rog, Varya Akulova showed remarkable physical abilities from a very young age. When she was just one year old, Varya could do a handstand, at one and a half she did flips, at three years of age she started performing acrobatic routines with her parents, and by age four she was already doing powerlifting exercises with massive weights. When Varya’s mother, Larisa, became pregnant, her father, Yuri, started making plans about performing in the circus with his yet-unborn strong son, but when his wife gave birth to a girl, he knew his dreams would never materialize. But as the days went by, Yuri began to realize that with the right training, his daughter could become as strong as a man. The girl had stronger arms and legs than most babies her age, and soon he became certain Varya had inherited the Akulovs’ legendary strength. Historically, his ancestors served at the court of Catherine II and became known for their amazing abilities and toughness during the Russian – Turkish wars. And as the years passed, it became clear Varya was truly an Akulov, able to lift massive weights when other girls her age were busy playing with dolls.

Varya-Akulova

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Incredibly Detailed 34-Meter-Long Train Model Is Made Entirely from Chocolate

Created by master chocolatier Andrew Farrugia, from Malta, this edible train model has set a new Guinness World Record the longest chocolate structure in the world. It measures a whopping 34 meters in length and features every detail of a classic steam-powered choo-choo.

Unveiled at the “Brussels Chocolate Week”, in Belgium’s capital city, this tasty masterpiece had everyone drooling. Made of 2,755 pounds (1250 kilos) of the finest Belgian chocolate, donated by chocolate brand Belcolade, this 34-meter-long steam train replica took Maltese chocolate artist Andrew Farrugia a painstaking 784 hours to complete. If you’re wondering about calorie volume, this delicious masterpiece packs a massive 6.5 million calories. Farrugia got the idea for the train last year, when visiting Belgian Chocolate Festival in Bruge. “I had this idea for a while, and I said what do you think if we do this realization of a long chocolate train, you know, because a train you can make it as long as you like,” he told the press.

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Cartoonist Looking for Solvers of World’s Largest Hand-Drawn Maze

Joe Wos, a Pittsburgh-based cartoonist and performer, is currently working on what he hopes will be the new world’s largest most difficult hand-drawn maze. Creating this thing is one daunting task, but nowhere as difficult as finding someone willing to spend approximately 40 hours trying to solve it.

Like all children, Joe Wos loved to doodle when he was young boy. He grew up to become an cartoonist, and as he approached 40 years old, he felt the need to achieve some “lifelong goals”, one of which was setting a Guinness record. He remembered that as a kid, he would create mazes on huge pieces of paper that often ended up on the walls of his home, and realized that could be his shot. After doing some research he learned Guinness had other maze-related records so he asked them if they were willing to acknowledge the world largest hand-drawn maze. They accepted, but with a number of conditions: Wos’ maze would have to be at least 10 square meters in size, it would have to be solvable, and drawn by him alone. Also, he needs five witnesses every time he goes to work on it. The 42-year-old cartoonist started this monumental project on July 27 and hopes to complete his intricate masterpiece by the end of September. “It’s not easy,” he told the Huffington Post. “One path has to remain open, but I have to keep about five paths available just in case I draw myself into a wrong path. And that will be terrible for the person who actually solves the maze because they may spend up to 30 minutes going down a wrong path as well.”

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World’s Biggest Barbie Fan Collects 15,000 Dolls in 19 Years

Bettina Dorfmann, from Dusseldorf, Germany, will be featured in the 2013 Guinness Book of Records for her amazing Barbie Doll collection which numbers 15,000 items. She started collecting Barbies in 1993 and doesn’t plan on ever ending her quest for new additions.

Ever since Barbie was created, in 1959, it’s estimated about 1 billion dolls have been produced, and there are over 100,000 passionate doll collectors all around the world, hunting for the rarest items. But none is more dedicated than Bettina Dorfman, from Germany. In the last 19 years she has amassed an impressive collection of over 15,000 Barbie dolls, from vintage items of the 1960s, to the latest models launched by Mattel. The 52-year-old Dusseldorf-based collector says she has loved Barbie ever since she was just a little girl. “They are great for children. You can wash their hair, change their clothes, buy new outfits”, she told the BBC, back in 2009, when she had “only” 6,000 dolls. But even after she grew up, Barbie still appealed to her, and since her daughter Melissa always seemed more interested in the new Barbies that came out than in the old ones Bettina had saved for her, she decided to keep them for herself.

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Real-Life Popeye Has World’s Largest Biceps

Moustafa Ismail, a 24-year-old Egyptian bodybuilder has recently claimed the Guinness record for world’s largest biceps. His bulging arms are 31 inches across, the same circumference as a grown man’s waist. He is often called a real-life Popeye, just like arm-wrestler Matthias Schlitte.

You’ve probably seen those horrific photos floating around the Internet of bodybuilders who have injected their muscles with synthol. It is not a growth hormone, nor an anabolic steroid, but a synthetic oil famous for giving weight-lifters freakish, almost cartoon-like muscles. Now, one man has proven you can get the same results if you just work out hard-enough and stick to a rich-protein diet. Moustafa Ismail, an Egyptian bodybuilder currently living in Massachusetts, USA, has been pumping iron religiously for the last 10 years, and his results are pretty impressive. The man nicknamed Big Mo started working out as a way to keep fit, but after receiving compliments from fellow fitness enthusiasts on the size of his arms, he decided to dedicate himself to becoming even bigger. With arms the circumference of a grown man’s waist, you can say Moustafa has reached his goal.

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