You know how the skin on your hands gets wrinkly every time you spend a little too much time in the bathtub? Imagine what your hands must look like after ten full days of being submerged underwater. Tim Yarrow doesn’t have to imagine it; he is the current record holder for the longest time spent underwater and he has the hands to prove it.
Back in 2002, South-African Aquaman Tim Yarrow spent 240 hours submerged in a small water tank in a Johannesburg shopping mall. He beat a record that dated back to 1986, but it was much tougher than you think. Breathing issues aside, the man had to eat, sleep and do his “business” underwater for 10 days, while groups of shoppers gathered around the tank and watched. He used a low fiber diet delivered through a tube, and a catheter to eliminate waste from his body. Scary stuff if you ask me, but not nearly as scary as how his hands looked when he finally came out of the water. Even though he wore scuba gloves the whole time, the guy had the hands of a 200-year-old. The Science Channel’s “Outrageous Acts of Science” TV show explains why Tim’s hands became so freakishly wrinkled.
