Long eyelashes are generally considered beautiful, but this Ukrainian man’s extra-long lashes are just plain creepy. 58-year-old Valery Smagliy, from Kiev, believes that he has the world’s bushiest eyelashes, a trait that he attributes to a secret ingredient in his diet.

Valery said that he started eating something, and noticed that it made his eyelashes grow really long and thick. And when he realized that it made women jealous, he decided to keep the ingredient a secret in order to market it later. “Women would stop me in the street and ask me what the secret was, they can see that they are real and not fake,” he said. “And whether it’s man or woman, most people don’t seem to pay much attention when I’m talking to them because they’re always looking at my eyelashes.”

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With most of us having to replace light-bulbs every few months, it’s amazing that the Centennial Light-Bulb at Fire Station No. 6 in Livermore, California, has been burning continuously ever since 1901.

The exact date the centennial bulb was turned on is unknown, although its birthday is usually celebrated on June 18. However, we do know that it has been alight 24 hours a day since then, shining a dim light over the fire engines. Apart from the few power outages it has faced in the last 113 years, the unbreakable light-bulb has only had two breaks – one in 1976, when it was moved from one fire station and installed in another, and one in 2013, when it was off for 9 3.4 hours. When the bulb was moved, almost 40 years ago, people were so cautious not to break it that they severed the cord, instead of unscrewing it, and transferred it with a full police and fire truck escort. The whole business lasted just 22 minutes, after which it was back to business as usual.

The impressive light-bulb is apparently an improved hand-blown incandescent lamp with carbon filament. Debora Katz, a physicist at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., has conducted extensive research on the centennial light-bulb and what makes it so special, using a vintage light bulb from Shelby Electric Co. that is a near replica of the Livermore lamp. “The Livermore light bulb differs from a contemporary incandescent bulb in two ways,” says Katz. “First its filament is about eight times thicker than a contemporary bulb. Second, the filament is a semiconductor, most likely made of carbon. When a conductor gets hotter, its ability to conduct electricity goes down. When the Shelby bulb gets hotter, it becomes a better conductor of electricity.”

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When Australian lawyer David Richards started decorating his family home for Christmas four years ago, little did he know that the simple pastime would snowball into a huge passion. The father-of-three is now a self-proclaimed ‘crazy Christmas lights guy’.

Impressed with the display of lights at his home last year, Richards was invited to transform Petrie Plaza in Canberra’s Central Business District into an epic Christmas spectacle this year. And Richards has not disappointed – this year’s display consists of a whopping 120 kilometers of lights and over one million light bulbs. Petrie Plaza now features a 3-D image constructed of lights, covering more than 41,000 square feet, in the shape of three large Christmas presents.

The spectacular display has won Richards a place in the Guinness Book for the third time. He won the record last year when he decorated his home with 502,165 lights, and once before in 2011. “Christmas lights really get people into the festive spirit,” Richards told Guinness. “We decorated our home for years, and people came from everywhere to see our lights. This year, who knows how many people will come along?”

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72-year-old Howard Helmer can produce a delicious gourmet omelette faster than anyone else in the world. Over the years, he’s managed to hang on to two Guinness World Records – one for the fastest omelette (in 39 seconds) and the other for turning out a whopping 427 omelettes in 30 minutes.

In every demonstrative video he makes, Helmer shares his secret – he mixes two eggs with two tablespoons of water, and fries them in a 10-inch omelette pan. His routine goes something like this: “Butter in the pan – two eggs and two tablespoons of water – bring the cooked egg to the center of the pan and tilt the pan so that the raw egg finds some base to cook on until there’s no more runny egg but the egg is still very moist on top. In goes some cheese, some spinach, fold the omelette in half, and then the whole thing goes upside down on your plate.”

Helmer’s association with eggs actually began 42 years ago, when he took up a job at the American Egg Board, writing copy about the wonders of chicken eggs. Since then, he has promoted eggs at country fairs, restaurant conventions, culinary schools, and on national television. Over the years, he’s also worked with famous chefs and taught movie stars to make omelettes.

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Last month, three friends from Norway set a new world record for visiting the most number of countries in a day. They made it to 19 different countries across Europe in only 24 hours, beating the 2012 world record of 17 countries. Throughout the journey, they had to follow only three simple rules: physically stand in each country, complete visits within any consecutive 24-hour period, and provide media evidence.

The three extreme travelers – Gunnar Garfors, 39, Tay-young Pak, 42, and Øystein Djupvik, 40 – started their journey from Greece at midnight on September 22. From there they followed a northwestern route, passing through 18 other countries: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Switzerland.

They managed to make their final stop in Liechtenstein, just before the 24 hours were up. And although they had time to spare at the end of the trip, bad weather conditions prevented them from making it to their 20th country, Italy. But that didn’t bother the trio, who were obviously elated with their achievement.

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Indian weightlifting champion Maibam Itomba Meitei probably has the strongest pinky fingers in the world. The 26-year-old from Imphal city in the state of Manipur recently set the Guinness World Record for the most number of ‘pinky pull ups’ – he used his little fingers to pull his chin above the bar 16 consecutive times in 30 seconds.

Maibam broke the world record previously set by an American weight lifter, who was able to do only 16 pull ups in one minute. He completed the stunning feat quite comfortably during an event organised at the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy. The audience, consisting of several local politicians, was left speechless by Maibam’s display of sheer strength.

A specially designed iron bar was used for the performance – it had two small hooks for Maibam to insert his two little fingers. Once he laced his pinkies through the hooks, he was able to lift his body (weighing 51 kilograms) up with tremendous ease, bringing his chin all the way over to the bar.

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‘Motor mouth’ Fran Capo is a fast talker – the woman can churn out over 600 words a minute, or 11 words per second! At such high speeds, you might not always be able to understand what she’s saying. I just watched a video of her telling the story of The Three Little Pigs in 15 seconds flat, and I was totally lost.

But comprehensibility is obviously not what she’s aiming for when she’s trying to break a record. The ‘Fast Talker Extraordinaire’ holds the Guinness World Record for being the fastest female talker in the world – she actually broke this record twice. She was also featured in the Ripley’s Believe it or Not – Planet Eccentric Book and in the Book of Alternative Records.

A native of New York, Fran has always been a fast talker. “Ever since I was a kid, I started doing it,” she said. “I didn’t say, ‘One day I’m going to grow up and be a fast talker,’ you know.” She started her career as a stand-up comic and sort of stumbled into breaking records along the way.

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Nanjing city, the capital of China’s Jiangsu Province, is the new home of the world’s largest and longest 3D street painting. The artwork, named ‘Rhythms of Youth’ was unveiled on June 11; it is a whopping 365 meters long, covering over 2,500 square meters on the campus of the Communication University of China (CUCN). It has set two new Guinness World Records  – one for the largest, and the other for the longest street painting in the world.

The technique used to make the 3D painting is known as ‘anamorphic’ – the artwork is painted in a distorted fashion so it will only look right from a certain point of view. The team that created it was led by famous Chinese artist Yang Yongchun. “It took my team more than 20 days to finish the painting on the ground,” he said. “Every day, we worked on it from daybreak when we could barely tell the colors apart until it was too dark to see anything. We’ve devoted all of our time, energy and attention to this painting.”

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For the past 25 years, Mani Manithan has been walking backwards in a bizarre bid to achieve world peace. He started in 1989, after a string of violent incidents in his home country India shocked him. Now he says that he’s gotten so used to it that he couldn’t walk straight even if he wanted to!

Manithan sells mobile phones for a living in Agraharam village, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Since June 14, 1989, he has been breaking various records in walking backwards – all in an effort to achieve world peace. One of his very first acts after taking his vow was to walk backwards 300 miles,  naked, all the way from his village to Chennai city.

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John Reid, a balloon artist from New York, built the world’s largest balloon sculpture (made by a single person) last Friday. He got to work on Thursday morning at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience event and spent the next several hours inflating thousands of colored balloons at his booth.

42 hours later he had put together a 50-foot tall Transformers robot, ‘Poptimus’ Prime, using 4,302 purple, green, white, black and gray balloons. It was so tall that it actually couldn’t fit upright in the convention center. Reid and 10 other volunteers had to struggle a bit to bring it into a kneeling position. The robot is said to be invincible, except for one weakness – needles!

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The Punjab Youth Festival that took place last month in Lahore, Pakistan, featured a lot of bizarre events, including one that had human nut cracker Mohammad Rashid break a whopping 155 walnuts in just one minute. He didn’t even use any special tools, only his forehead.

The walnuts were placed on a long table in two neat rows. At the word ‘go’, Rashid went off like a raging bull, banging his head repeatedly against the table and breaking as many nuts as he could. Bits of shattered walnut were flying everywhere, but the young man didn’t lose focus until he was asked to stop. He emerged from the table with a small cut on his forehead and a victorious smile – he broke the previous record of 44 walnuts in a minute.

According to festival organizers, over 100 world records were challenged by Pakistani youth this year. They did manage to break one other record – a group of 30,000 attendees made the world’s largest human national flag at the National Hockey Stadium. Guinness World Record officials are currently collecting and analyzing the evidence before they declare that both records have indeed been broken.

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To be the ‘strongest kid in the world’ is a childhood dream that never translates into reality for most kids. But Jake Schellenschlager has managed to come very, very close to this goal. Inspiration hit him when he was 12 years old – when he saw his dad working out one day. Jake hasn’t looked back ever since. The 14-year-old American is now a weightlifter who can lift more than twice his own body weight.

At 5 foot 3 inches and 119 pounds, Jake has been setting world records for his weight class (under 123 pounds). Last June, he broke the world record for the squat for his age and weight at the Powerlifting Bench Press Championships in York, Pennsylvania. He lifted 136 kilograms (that’s 300 pounds – more than twice his body weight). Jake has been training for the past two-and-a-half years, without missing a single day. He gets the courage to keep going from his father. “My dad is super strong,” he says. “When I see him, it gives me motivation.” Jake and his dad work out together at their gym in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

According to Jake’s trainer, Mike Sarni, the teenager has displayed astounding mental strength. “He doesn’t feel he can be defeated,” said Sarni. “It is that inner strength that tells him, ‘I can do this.’ Usually, you get that in older, more mature people.” While his face is still that of a sweet little boy, his body is completely the opposite. Jake’s muscles are ripped and you can see the determination etched on his face in his weight lifting pictures.

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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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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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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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