The JCB Fastrac Two is a stripped-down and performance-enhanced JCB Fastrac tractor capable of reaching speeds of up to 247 km per hour (153.8 mph).

If you’ve ever driven behind a tractor, you probably already know that they are many things, but they certainly aren’t fast. Tractors are built for power, not speed, but what if someone wanted to make a tractor go really fast? Well, a few years ago, a team at English tractor manufacturer JCB set out to do just that and managed to set a new Guinness record for the world’s fastest tractor with a modified version of the company’s Fastrac tractor. Over two two-kilometer runs, it averaged a speed of 135 mph (217.6 km/h) and a peak speed of 153.771 mph (247 km/h).

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A five-month-old bar-tailed godwit recently smashed the record for long-distance migration after flying 13,560 kilometers non-stop over a period of 11 days.

Every autumn, millions of migratory birds take to the sky for a long and perilous journey to escape the coming cold, feed and breed for the next few months. Many of them cover impressive distances of over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), but this year, one small bird surpassed all expectations regarding long-distance flying, traveling a whopping 13,560 kilometers (8,425 miles) without stopping, and setting a new Guinness record in the process. And it was all because of an unusual detour that could have cost the bird its life, considering that the non-stop journey pushed its flight capacity to the limit.

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The highest-altitude cash machine in the world is located at the Khunjerab Pass border between China and Pakistan, at an elevation of 4,693 meters.

Over the past few decades, the ATM has become one of the world’s most ubiquitous pieces of technology, but you wouldn’t expect to see one while trekking through the snow-covered mountains of Pakistan, now would you? And yet, the Khunjerab Pass border pass in Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan province is home to the world’s highest fully-functional ATM. Installed by the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) in 2016, the solar- and wind-powered cash machine is a truly unusual sight to behold in such an isolated place as Khunjerab Pass, the highest paved border crossing in the world.

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A 35-year-old man from India’s Tamil Nadu state recently set a new world record for the longest distance driven in reverse in under 30 minutes – 16 kilometers and 140 meters.

During an event that took place last week at Edappadi Bypass in Tamil Nadu, Chandramouli, a passionate motorist from Salem district, managed to set a new world record by driving over 16 kilometers in reverse gear in under 30 minutes. The man, whose passion for driving cars goes back to when he was only 10 years old, practiced hard for the task, knowing that he had to beat the previous record set by 22-year-old Tesson Thomas from Pathanamthitta of Kerala, who had covered 14.2 km driving in reverse for 30 minutes. Chandramouli managed to blow that record out of the water, backing up for 16 kilometers and 140 meters in just 29 minutes and 10 seconds.

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Walter Orthmann, a 100-year-old man from Brazil has been working for the same company since 1938, which officially makes his career worthy of the Guinness Book of Records.

Orthman began working for Industrias Renaux S.A., a textile company in Brusque, on January 17, 1938, when he was only 15-years-old. He began as an assistant in the shipping department, but over the years, he was promoted to administrative assistant and, eventually, sales manager. During his 84-year-long career, Walter went on sales trips all over the world, received his paycheck in nine different currency denominations, and used nearly every commercial airline in the history of Brazilian aviation.

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Douglas Smith, a gardener from Hertfordshire, UK recently set a new Guinness Record for most tomatoes grown on a single stem, 1,269.

Up until last summer, the record for most tomatoes grown on a single stem had stood unchallenged for over a decade. Then English farmer Douglas Smith set his sights on breaking it, thinking that he could grow more than 488 fruits on a single stem. And he proved that last year, when he managed to obliterate the old record by growing 839 tomatoes on a greenhouse-grown plant. It was quite the achievement, but he was only getting started, as only a few weeks later the Hertfordshire broke his own record by growing no less than 1,269 tomatoes on a single stem.

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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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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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Karne Garibaldi, a popular restaurant in Guadalajara, holds the Guinness record for the world’s fastest food service: 13.5 seconds from order time until the food hits the table.

Usually, when visiting a popular award-winning restaurant, you expect waiting times to be on the long side, but that’s definitely not the case at Karne Garibaldi, a restaurant best known for its carne en su jugo dish and for having the world’s fastest order time. After patrons finish giving their orders to the waiters, it takes just over a dozen seconds before the plates hit their tables, which, as those who have eaten there at least once will tell you, is downright impressive. Karne Garibaldi has held the world record for the world’s fastest food service (13.5 seconds) since 1996.

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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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An Indian pensioner recently set a bizarre new national record after allegedly spending an entire hour staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without blinking once.

The 70-year-old retired Government officer from India’s Uttar Pradesh state was identified as Mr. MS Verma. He apparently trained for this incredible feat for 25 years, after being inspired by an Indian guru. His attempt to beat the previous record of staring into the sun without blinking was overseen by a representative of India’s Book of Records, as well as a group of politicians and physicians. After an hour of staring directly at the sun without sunglasses and without even blinking, Mr. Verma’s eyesight was deemed normal, as was his overall eye health.

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An Australian man managed to break a decade-old Guinness record, after letting out a belch louder than the average electrical drill.

Neville Sharp, from Humpty Doo, Northern Territory, has been belching ever since his sister, Sandy, taught him how to do it when he was only six years old. He has been honing his “skill” ever since, but it was when his wife encouraged him to put his unusual talent to good use by going for a world record that he really started improving his belching. Neville has been practicing hard for the last five years, and in August of this year, the 51-year-old managed to break a record that had been standing for nearly 12 years, after letting out a 112.4-decibel burp.

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Joy Chapman, a singer/songwriter from British Columbia, in Canada, recently set a new Guinness record for the lowest musical note sang by a female, a C1.

For as long as she can remember, Joy Chapman has always been able to sing in a very wide vocal range, from the alto, to tenor and base, but it wasn’t until her niece started encouraging her to go for a world record that she actually considered it. The girl had learned that the former record for the world’s lowest vocal note (female), was held by a singer who hit a D2 (the second lowest D note on a piano), and she was convinced that Joy could go significantly lower than that. She turned out to be right!

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A very patient Vietnamese artist spent three years meticulously drilling a whopping 45,863 holes smaller than a human hair into a hollowed-out ostrich egg.

Nguyen Hung Cuong, a talented artist from Hanoi, Vietnam, has been turning chicken eggs into intricate works of art for over a decade, but his most recent project is by far his most impressive yet. The 30-year-old reportedly spent the last three years of his life carefully drilling tens of thousands of holes, some only 0.2 mm in diameter, to create one of the most impressive egg carving in human history.

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American singer Tim Storms holds the Guinness Records for the “world’s lowest note produced by a human”, as well as for the “widest vocal range”.

Tim Storms has always had a pretty deep voice. He was eight-year-old when he heard this Christian acapella group and found that he could sing the bass notes right along with it. But he never imagined that his voice would ever become the deepest ever measured, allowing him to hit notes lower than the frequency a human ear can detect. Storms himself says that he can’t hear the  G-7 notes he is able to hit, but claims that he sort of feels it, and the special equipment used to test his deep voice have confirmed that he can indeed reach inaudible frequencies.

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