I’ll Be a Little Late For Dinner, Honey… Traffic is a Little Slow

The longest traffic jam on record happened on China National Highway 110, starting on August 14, 2010. The traffic jam slowed thousands of vehicles for more than 60 miles (100 km) and lasted for 12 days. Traffic at that time moved 0.6 miles per day. Occurring on China National Highway 110, many drivers were stuck in...

A Story About Many Stories

    The Burj Khalifa (Khalifa Tower) in Dubai officially opened on January 4, 2010. It currently holds the record as the tallest man-made structure. Among the records established by this building are: Tallest existing structure: 829.8 m (2,722 ft) (previously KVLY-TV mast – 628.8 m or 2,063 ft) Tallest structure ever built: 829.8 m...

Take a Deep Breath and Read This Sentence…

The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe holds the record for containing the longest printed English language sentence. The specimen is 13,955 words long. It was inspired by the Czech novel Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, which consists entirely of one sentence that runs for 96 pages.

Older Than Methuselah

The oldest living thing on earth is a bristlecone pine located in the White Mountains of California, USA. When discovered and tested in 2013, it was determined to be 5,064 years old. When it sprouted in 3051 BC, the Aegean Bronze Age had just begun, Egyptians were developing Hieroglyphic writing, and China was developing the...

Ministers Marry Lots of People… But Typically By Officiating, Not By Participating

Rev. Glynn "Scotty" Wolfe (1908 - 1997) holds the record for the largest number of monogamous marriages. Between 1926 and his death in 1997, Wolfe was married twenty-nine times to 26 different women. The longest marriage lasted eleven years. The shortest was nineteen days. Four of the marriages ended by the death of the wife....

Don’t Try to Pronounce It If You Are Wearing False Teeth

The 85-characters long Maori name for a hill in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, is the longest place name found in any English speaking country. It is, Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteaturipukakapikimaungah-oronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which roughly translates as, “the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as the land-eater, played his nose flute...

Cold Enough For Ya?

The coldest temperature ever recorded on earth was in August, 2010 in Antarctica. Satellites measured surface temperatures of -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit (-94.7 degrees Celsius). There is no way to disguise the fact that this is COLD. It is not entirely incompatible with human life, however. Scientists stationed at the South Pole have a tradition of...

I’m Dreaming of a Best Seller

"White Christmas", written by Irving Berlin and sung by Bing Crosby, is the best-selling single song of all time. With estimated sales in excess of 50 million for the original version and over 100 million sales for all versions, it has topped the charts since it was released in 1949 and has never been out...

Serve ‘Em Up Fast

Australian tennis player Samuel Groth holds the record for the fastest serve in a game. He smacked a ball at 163 mph (263 km/hr) in an event in Busan, South Korea in May 2012. source

Some Light Reading

The world record for the longest novel ever published goes to A la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. It was published in 13 volumes beginning in 1912. With an estimated 9,609,000 characters (each letter counts as one character. Spaces are also counted, as one character each), it came out at 4,215 pages in...

I’ll Take My Winnings By Check, Mate

The longest tournament chess game, in terms of moves, ever to be played was Ivan Nikolic vs. Goran Arsovic in Belgrade, Serbia in 1989 The game lasted for 269 moves and took 20 hours and 15 minutes to complete. It ended in a draw. The longest decisive tournament game was Viktor Kortchnoi vs. Laurent Fressinet,...

Next Time, Please Show Your Work

Pierre de Fermat (1605-1665) wrote in the margin of a book, "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem which this margin is too small to contain." He then died. It took 357 years before his proof was rediscovered by Andrew Wiles in 1994. The theorem was noted by Guinness Book of World Records as...

History’s Shortest War

The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar on 27 August 1896. With a duration of only 45 minutes, it holds the record of being the shortest war in recorded history. The war broke out after Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini, who had willingly co-operated with the British colonial administration, died on 25...

Land? Who Needs Land?

The swift spends almost all of its life in the air, touching down only to reproduce. They will cling to a wall or rock-face to check a potential nest hole, and they will spend the night in such a hole to establish it as their nest site. When incubating their eggs and feeding their young...

If The Vows Required Staying Married Until the Cake Was Eaten, It Would Be ‘Til Death Do Us Part

The world’s largest wedding cake ever displayed was baked by Mohegan Sun Hotel and Casino’s chef Lynn Mansel and a team of 57 chefs and "pastry artisans" at a New England showcase in Uncasville, Connecticut. The cake weighed in at 15,032 pounds and had seven tiers — each of which took two forklift trucks to...