K Praveen, a 21-year-old man from Thiruthangal in Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, has a 10.8-centimeter-long tongue, according to the India Book of Records.

According to the University of Edinburgh, the average human male tongue is around 8.5-cm-long, which makes K Praveen’s tongue over 2.5cm longer, and probably the longest in the world. The young robotics student has known that his tongue was longer than usual ever since he started showing friends and family what he could do with it… And by that we mean touching the tip of his nose and his elbow with it, and almost touching his eyes. Due to a lack of funds, he has not been able to get his tongue officially measured by Guinness Records, but he did get his name in India’s own Limca Book of Records, for having the longest tongue in the country.

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Named after the Argentinian family who developed the breed in the middle of the 19th Century, Falabella is widely regarded as the world’s smallest horse breed, with an average height of just 70cm.

The origins of the Falabella breed are shouted in the mists of legend. Some say that their bloodline can be traced back to the Andalusian and Iberian breeds that the Spanish conquistadores brought with them to South America. When the Spanish were driven off, the horses were left to fend for themselves in a harsh, resource-poor environment. As a result, by the mid-19th century, smaller, inbred animals were being observed in the herds of Mapuche, in southern Buenos Aires province. It was these specimens that were specifically bred to create even smaller animals, which eventually led to the creation of the modern Falabella breed we know today.

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Julio, a 30-year-old Swiss educator has an impressive collection of four, five, six and even seven-leafed clovers, which just might make him the world’s luckiest man.

Clovers with more than three leaves are considered lucky charms in many cultures, and if a person’s luck would be measured in the sheer number of such clovers in their possession, a Swiss collector of rare clovers would almost undoubtedly be the world’s luckiest man. 30-year-old Julio has been collecting lucky clovers since he was only nine, and has since amassed an enviable collection of 3,467 four, five, six and even seven-leafed clovers laminated to protect them from the elements.

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As the name suggests, the Hummer H1 X3 is three times the size of a standard Hummer H1, making it the largest Hummer in the world, by far.

The Hummer H1 is one of the largest street-legal SUVs ever made, but it literally looks like a toy car next to the behemoth that is the Hummer H1 X3. Measuring 6.6 meters high, 14 meters long, and 6 meters wide (21.6 x 46 x 19.6 feet), this metal monster is the largest Hummer in existence, at least according to its owner, Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, aka the Rainbow Sheikh, one of the most eccentric car owners in the world.

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Deinococcus radiodurans is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as “the world’s toughest bacterium,” and it is fully deserving of that title.

Scientists discovered the red, spherical bacterium that later came to be known as deinococcus radiodurans about 70 years ago, when examining a can of ground meat that had spoiled despite having been sterilized by exposure to doses of radiation in the megarad range. Research would later show that this lowly bacterium can withstand 10,000 times the amount of radiation that would normally kill a human being, thanks to a miraculous ability to repair numerous DNA double-strand breaks in a matter of hours.

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Most people go on cruise ships for vacations, but for Mario Salcedo, cruise ships have been his home for the last 23 years, and this continuous life on the water has made him “the world’s happiest man”.

Calling Mario Salcedo a “super cruiser” would probably be an understatement. The retired financier has been on hundreds of cruises in the last 23 years, and with the exception of a recent 1.5-year break due to the Covid pandemic, he has rarely spent more than a day or two on dry land. A native of Miami, Florida, Salcedo spent much of his life working for a number of large finance companies, including Federal Express, traveling the world and seeing other people have fun. Then, one day, he decided it was his time to have fun, so in 1997 he quit his job.

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Luo Yingjiu, an 81-year-old man in China’s Hubei Province, has spent the last three decades of his life taking care of sick and disabled animals at the “world’s loneliest zoo”.

It was during the 1980s that Luo Yingjiu started buying animals and taking them home with him. He wasn’t doing it as a pet collector, but as an animal lover sick of seeing all sorts of disabled and visibly sick creatures being kept in cages and sold on the streets. So he bought them and took them home with him, where he did his best to nurse them back to health. The lucky ones that made a full recovery were eventually released back into the wild, but some were in such bad shape that they required constant care and attention, which Luo was more than happy to provide…

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When it comes to dairy alternatives, we already have a lot of “milks” to choose from, but the latest alternative could prove to be a game-changer due to how available and cheap its main ingredient is.

Potato milk doesn’t sound like the most delicious thing in the world, but then again, neither does oat milk or soy milk and look how popular they turned out to be. Not to mention that this new dairy alternative is apparently “deliciously creamy” and works great for homemade lattes and cappuccinos. Plus, the humble potato uses a lot less land and resources than other plants that are currently used for milk, which makes both the vegetable and the milk more affordable.

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Michael Amoia, a music producer and entrepreneur from New York, recently set a new world record for the most insects tattooed on his body, a whopping 864.

But just because he has a giant centipede covering most of his front torso, and a menacing scorpion inked on the right side of his face does not mean that Michael Amoia likes insects. In fact, the opposite is true, as the Queens native says he hates bugs and is afraid of them. They represented one of the fears he had as a child, and having them permanently inked on his body was his way of dealing with and embracing that fear. It all started with one tattoo when he was 21-years-old, and it just snowballed from there. Today he has twice as many insect tattoos as the previous holder of the Guinness record for most insects tattooed on a human body.

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The owner of a severely overweight feline that many have dubbed the world’s fattest cat is facing accusations of animal cruelty for allowing his pet to get so big.

Lyznia the Cat, an Instafamous feline whose adorable face and unenviable figure have earned it over 10,000 followers on the popular social network, recently landed her owner in hot water. After photos of the obese cat started doing the rounds online, her Russian female owner started receiving criticism online for overfeeding her pet and not caring about her wellbeing. However, the woman has since hit back at her critics, saying that Lyznia has been having weight problems ever since she first became pregnant a few years ago.

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A Gentiana flower discovered only a couple of years ago in Tibet has been dubbed the world’s shiest flower for its ability to close in as little as seven seconds after being touched.

Chinese scientists recently published a study conducted on four species of Gentiana discovered in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, focusing primarily on the flowers’ ability to quickly respond to being touched. Plants are generally perceived as static organisms, with the only notable exceptions being carnivorous plants capable of movements designed to trap inspects inside. However, the four new species of Gentiana flowers discovered in the plateaus of Tibet have faster reactions than any other plants observed before. According to the above-mentioned study, these flowers can close completely in just 7 seconds. This ability has earned the Gentiana the unofficial title of ‘world’s shiest flower’.

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An Ohio-based hairstylist has spent the last nine years of his life creating the world’s largest human hair ball out of the cut hair of his clients.

Steve Warden owns and operates a salon named Blockers in Cambridge, Ohio. In 2013, after his youngest child went off to college, he embarked on a quest to break the Guinness world record for the largest ball of human hair, and last month he did just that. Hoss the Hairball weighs a whopping 102.12 kg (225.13 lbs), which makes it over 25 kilograms heavier than the previous titleholder. And because lumps of human hair are constantly being added to it, Hoss is expected to keep growing for many years to come, making it really hard to dethrone.

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Japan recently unveiled the world’s first Dual-Mode Vehicle (DMV), a contraption that runs both on roads, like a bus, and on rails, like a train.

The unique bus-train hybrid was unveiled last month, in the town of Kaiyo, Japan’s Tokushima Prefecture. The mini-bus-like contraption didn’t win anyone over with its looks, but it definitely made an impression in terms of practicality. It runs with normal rubber tires on the road, but when it needs to switch to train mode, a pair of metal wheels drop down from the vehicle’s underbelly. The front tires are lifted off of the track, while the rear wheels stay down to propel the vehicle. Switching between road and train modes takes only about 15 seconds.

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An ambitious mother who wanted to set a unique Guinness World Record gave her daughter a 1,019-letter name which resulted in her getting a two-foot-long birth certificate.

Over the years, we’ve featured some pretty unconventional baby names here on OC, but most of them at least made some kind of sense. The world’s longest name recorded on a birth certificate, on the other hand, is just that, long, and pretty much impossible to pronounce, but then again, that was basically the point. The mother who gave her daughter this incredibly long name told Oprah Winfrey that she just wanted to set a Guinness record and at the same time make sure that her girl had a unique name.

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Chiyomi Sawa, a 72-year-old woman from Japan has been the undisputed World Masters Women’s Bench Press Champion for the last 19 years, and she doesn’t plan to stop dominating anytime soon.

Walking past Chiyomi Sawa on the street, you’d be forgiven for mistaking her for just a petite, slightly overweight pensioner, but in reality, she is a natural-born athlete with her sights set on her 20th consecutive world bench press champion title. Ever since she started competing at the highest level, in 2006, Sawa has dominated the world championship, winning first place at every edition, in different weight classes. The 72-year-old is now eyeing champion title number 20, and judging by her track record, she’ll most likely claim it.

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