Amazing untrue records

[Nicolas]

Shortest dwarf tossing

The record for shortest dwarf tossing is for Domir Isbald, who is 43 cm tall and tosses objects into wishing wells as his profession.

The record for shortest dwarf tossing is for Domir Isbald, who tossed a coin a mere 2.4 mm into a wishing well.

The record for shortest dwarf tossing is for Domir Isbald, who is 43 cm tall. He was the only tosser and dwarf candidate in a dwarf tossing contest. As a result, the contest last only one tossing, in which Domir Isbald tossed himself over a distance of 2.6 mm into a wishing well, thereby almost breaking two records at once and equalling a third.

[mike alexander]

SHORTEST TEMPORAL INTERVAL FOR A TELEVISION REMOTE BEING LOST
Nigel Ipswich of Lyme Rickey, England, accidently changed from BBC1 to Channel Four and then set down his remote control. Realizing he had switched from ICC World Cup Super Eight Cricket to The Charlotte Church Show he reached down with his right hand to change back and couldn’t find the clicker. Realizing he had been holding the device in his left hand he used it to pick it up instead and returned to BBC1. The interval was slightly under two seconds, a new world’s mark. Unfortunately, during the two-second outage he missed a smashing play in the England-Sri Lanka match when Bell stopped a firm drive from Silva at covers and then threw down the stumps at the non-striker’s, with Dilshan way out of his crease. Ipswitch then shot himself in disgust and consequently never learned that the Lankans completely collapsed and were all out for 235 off the last ball of the 50th over.

[mike alexander]

WORLD'S OLDEST FAKE FOSSIL
Mr. Carter Macquarie of Adelaide,South Australia, has produced fake fossils of the oldest multicellular organisms known. Using rocks from the Ediacara Hills Macquarie has painstakingly carved excellent impostors of various medusiod forms resembling those found in the Ediacaran fossil assemblage, approximately six hundred million years old. Some have even fooled curators at major natural history museums.

Mr. Macquarie thus beats out Mr. Nelson Trafalgar of Drumheller, Alberta, who until now held the oldest fake fossil record of five hundred forty million years with his engravings of Yohoia and Wiwaxia in discarded slabs of Burgess shale.

[mike alexander]

MAN DECLINES 75th OFFER TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE ECONOMIST

Mr. Elmer McNutt of Boring, Oregon has decided that,despite the attractivemess of the offer, he will decline his 75th chance to susbscribe to The Economist.

"When I received the envelope in the mail saying 'The Pleasure of Your Reply is Requested', or something like that, I thought it might be interesting," McNutt said. "It also told be I could 'Enjoy six issues risk-free'."

But the latter offer made McNutt suspicious. "I had to ask myself what the risk was after the first six issues. Why should it be riskier to get the seventh issue? It worried me a bit. Could they be lulling me into a sense of complacency with six riskless issues, only to wallop me good after that?"

What finally decided the question for him was a perusal of the current issue's contents. "Lord, it looked more boring than Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly combined," he said.

[mike alexander]

MOST HEAVILY ARMORED DIRIGIBLE AIRSHIP IN HISTORY
In early 1915 Count Zeppelin reacted to increasing damage to his airships by ordering the construction of the LZ-99, the first such craft to be completely enclosed with 1/2" thick riveted cast iron plates. The LZ-99 was 415' long, powered by sixteen 12-cylinder Mercedes "Wolfram" diesel engines, and weighed slightly over 23,000 tons.

On its single flight it left a groove approximately 8' deep and 2,200' long across the test field at Stuttgart Flugplatz.

[Paul Beardsley]

Longest Leg.
The longest human leg to be measured in my front room this evening is my own. At a staggering 31 inches (79 cm), it is possible that my next door neighbour has a longer leg, but I don't want to call round just now because it's quite late and he's probably just got his baby off to sleep.

Least Violent Sheep.
Susan Meredith, a Shetland sheep, took no part in the Hereford sheep riots of 1962, despite pressure to conform. Three shepherds and four sheep dogs were killed, and a further one was injured, before the inexplicable ovine uprising was quelled.

The reason for Susan's pacifist stance is unknown, as the technology to translate baa-ing into UK English did not exist at the time. Susan died the following year when she attempted to intervene in a knife fight between two friesian cows.

[Donnie B.]

Least Violent Sheep.
Susan Meredith, a Shetland sheep, took no part in the Hereford sheep riots of 1962, despite pressure to conform. Three shepherds and four sheep dogs were killed, and a further one was injured, before the inexplicable ovine uprising was quelled.

The reason for Susan's pacifist stance is unknown, as the technology to translate baa-ing into UK English did not exist at the time. Susan died the following year when she attempted to intervene in a knife fight between two friesian cows.

She didn't so much fly as plummet, I suppose...

[eburacum45]

World’s most civil war
The Civil War in Outer Mohemia in 1761 holds the record for the most civil war in history, as the combatants each consistently said “Excuse me” and “Thank you” before and after killing each other.

[Paul Beardsley]

Bluest blue movie.
The bluest blue movie of all time had a wavelength of exactly 4750 Angstrom. Unfortunately it would be a violation of BAUT rules to reveal its title.

[mike alexander]

MOST EXTREME CASE OF SWATTING A MOSQUITO WITH A SLEDGE HAMMER
While performing test exposures in the prime focus cage of the newly-commissioned Hale telescope on Mount Palomar in 1949, Edwin Hubble rubbed his chin and realized he hadn't shaved that morning. Leaning over the side of the cage he took a small razor from his observing kit and proceded to give himself a quick trim, using the 200" telescope as a shaving mirror.

Shortly after, Alan Sandage announced the discovery of 'cosmic whiskers' in the Coma galaxy cluster, starting a debate that wasn't settled until the mirror was cleaned and realuminized the following year.

[mugaliens]

World's Most Bizarre Air Crash

Authorities remained in a heightened state of alert after pulling more than 1,135 bodies from the wreckage of a single Boeing 737 that crashed near the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. Professors and students from Texas A&M, who arrived on the scene within minutes to assist in recovery efforts, grew alarmed as they dug through the wreckage, much of which buried itself underground upon impact.

Sources report that much of the alarm stems from two observations made by those from Texas A&M, including a much higher death toll than would be expected from such a small aircraft, and the advanced state of decay of some of the bodies, the latter of which prompted authorities to mandate the use biochemical warfare protective overgarments.

As the volunteers continue to dig, they continue to find more bodies, giving rise to questions about human trafficking. Authorities remain hopeful, however, that their questions will soon be answered.

This is Tom Davies, reporting to you live from College Station Cemetery. Back to you, John...

[mike alexander]

THE WORST SCIENCE FICTION STORY EVER WRITTEN
The worst science fiction story ever written was "Spanners Live in Vain", penned by Cordwainer Jones (the nom de plume of Dr. Paul Limburger) in 1952. The story was purchased by Michael Moorcock for publication in his British New Wave magazine New Worlds, but was never actually printed, since New Worlds did not begin publication until 1964. Moorcock sold the story to Harlan Ellison for inclusion in his anthology Enough Dangerous Visions, Already!, to appear in spring 2063.

In the 25th century the world is absolutely dependent on the Spanners, a guild which grew out of the Plumber's Union, who are the only people who can properly repair, connect and maintain the incredible maze of pipes that keeps civilization running. Spanner Martel, who holds the position of Hammer in the Guild, is told that an outsider has developed a type of pipe known by the code 'PVC', which can be cut with a common hacksaw and connected by glue, obviating the bewildering array of tools the Spanners need for their work, as well as the many hours they spend with their heads under the sink as their waistbands creep down. As the Guild Head (the Chief Hairy Crevice) tells Martel, "If anyone can do his own plumbing, then SPANNERS LIVE IN VAIN!" Martel is given the job of murdering this interloper and preserving the Guild's position.

Unfortunately for the Guild, but fortuantely for civilization, Martel is given to 'cranching', a period when he is able to throw off the strictures of Guild practice and become human (the procedure is named after the material used to achieve this temporary state, Cranch Beer). It is during this time he realizes there is more to work then the Guild, not to mention more to life than Cranch Beer. His wife introduces him to Guiness, which makes him temporarily brilliant, and he eventually single-handedly foils the plot to kill the inventor, frees mankind from the tyranny of the Spanners, and goes into business producing a new type of pants belt that keeps the waistband from creeping down in back when the wearer is head-first under the sink, fixing the plumbing.

Fortunately for our civilization, the story was never published in Britain. Since Elllison changed the name of the story, feeling that American audiences might not understand the allusion, "Wrenches Live in Vain" has never appeared in the US, either.

[mike alexander]

LONGEST SIGH?
The longest sigh ever sighed was reported by Beatrice Wampole of Flickingnits, Northumbershire, England. Since she was alone at the time, the exact length of the sigh cannot be verified. She acknowledged this with a sigh.

[mike alexander]

FEWEST NUMBER OF POSTS FOR A FORUM THREAD TO GO OFF-TOPIC
Which reminds me of an interesting fact I learned about the mating practices of Galapagos Islands tortoises...

[mike alexander]

BIGGEST LETDOWN IN A LONG-RUNNING SERIES
The biggest letdown in a long-running series occured on the television show "Dallas" when Pamela Barnes woke up to see President Bush on the morning news and realized the entire Gore administration had just been a bad dream.

[ad hominem]

the best web site is baut

[HenrikOlsen]

It's supposed to be untrue records.

[mike alexander]

MAN SURVIVES LONGEST FALL ON RECORD
Laurence Jenkins of Bellfontaine, Ohio, lived unscathed through the fall of 1994, which had the longest interval between autumn equinox and winter solstice of any year since the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the 16th century. Unfortunately, Mr. Jenkins died in 1996 when he slipped on a banana peel in front of his house and fractured his skull.

[Lianachan]

People who like this thread may be interested in the books of Heroic Failures where real records and distinctions such as these are described in an extremely funny way.

[mike alexander]

I am more disturbed that no one actually checked whether or not the autumn of 1994 is, in fact, the longest one since the modern calendar was adopted. Given this is BAUT, after all.




MOST AMAZING ANCIENT ENGINEERING FEAT
The Great Pryamid of Cheops at Giza is almost five hundred feet high and weighs an estimated six million tons, but was constructed with such amazing accuracy that its base exactly touches the ground at every point!

[Maksutov]

RECORD FOR HIGHEST BALLOON
The highest balloon on record was personally inflated by Timothy Leary in 1967. After the various chemicals, particulates, and hot air permeated through its latex enclosure, the balloon then set a record for the Longest, Slowest Descent of an inflated object.

[South East]

http://www.tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel...othyLeary.html

[Donnie B.]

RECORD FOR HIGHEST BALLOON
The highest balloon on record was personally inflated by Timothy Leary in 1967. After the various chemicals, particulates, and hot air permeated through its latex enclosure, the balloon then set a record for the Longest, Slowest Descent of an inflated object.

Oh, great... now I have a Moody Blues song-meme infecting my brain.

[mike alexander]

WORST SONG MEME TO INFECT A BRAIN
In a narrow victory, "The Hustle" beat out "Brazil" as the single hardest melody to get out of the human brain after exposure. Thirty eight people have actually attempted to beat the song out of their heads with a baseball bat (three in Britain with a cricket bat). The only known exception is Elmer Danktrouser of Murray City, Ohio, who has walked happily around for the past three years whistling the tune softly, pausing to assume a Travolta-like pose every ninety seconds and hissing "Do the Hustle!"

[mugaliens]

The Longest Case of Scurvy on Record

Henry "Hank" Walters, a British seaman lost at sea in the late 1800s when he was just 16, was finally spotted by a shore party in 1963. Because the tiny island on which he'd been living was so sparse, his scurvy, which settled in around 1892, continued only partially managed throughout the rest of his stay.

At age 87, while stepping into the dory, he slipped and fractured his arm, resulting on complications which took his life three days later. It is rumored his last words were, "Can I have another Kiwi? They're so tasty."

[Paul Beardsley]

Most Unusual Guest Singer to Appear on a Prog Rock Album

The most unusual guest singer to appear on a prog rock album was Simon Farquharson, a Piltdown Man who was timescooped from the year 150,037 BCE. He is best known for his vocal contribution to side 2 of the 1973 album, Tubular Bells.

"It was quite a coup at the time," said the album's composer Mike Oldfield. "Timescooping a living specimen from that period of prehistory is always going to be problematic; getting them to perform in a studio afterwards is almost unheard of. Unless you count Oasis, of course. Ha ha, I didn't say that."

But the biggest surprise for Oldfield was the revelation that Piltdown Man had been declared a hoax exactly twenty years earlier.

"I was gobsmacked," confessed Oldfield. "Honestly, you could have knocked me down with an acoustic guitar."

Sally Oldfield, sister to the composer, and who had provided vocals for the first side of the album, was less surprised. "I was sure there was something funny about his jaw," she recalls. "It kind of didn't belong, you know? Mind you, I was knocking around with Mick Jagger at the time, so I was used to that sort of thing."

Simon Farquharson went on to appear in a single episode of the British sitcom It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, but tragically died of chickenpox (having no natural immunity to the disease) at the age of 30 - or the age of 152,010 if you prefer to go by his actual date of birth, and ignore the changes to the Gregorian calendar and the fact that there was never a year 0.

[LurchGS]

PET FOUND AFTER LONGEST-KNOWN SEPARATION
William and Deborah McNulty of Zanesville, Ohio are the holders of the record for the longest interval known between losing and then recovering a beloved pet.

While visiting Yellowstone National Park on their honeymoon, Mrs. McNulty's young pet cat 'Fluffles' was startled by the eruption of Old Faithful geyser and bolted across the field into the forest nearby. Despite hours of searching, the saddened couple eventually had to depart, leaving their pet behind.

Twenty years later the couple decided to recreate their honeymoon trip. As he was walking in the woods near Old Faithful, Mr. McNulty happened to glance down and there, at the foot of a tree, was Fluffles! "The poor thing was just skin and bones and was even missing most of his tail, but I reached down and checked the tag on his collar and sure enough, it was good old Fluffles!" Calling his wife over, he picked up the old cat and tenderly placed it in his wife's arms.

"I was moved to tears, even after I hugged him and the dried-up left hind leg broke off," Mrs. McNulty said. The couple returned home with Fluffles, who now resides on their mantlepiece, next to a chunk of travertine picked up just outside Yellowstone.

What's so wrong about this is that it actuallly happened to my wife and me - though not on our honeymoon. We were in a motel in West Yelowstone - which didn't allow pets. We left the cats and dog in the truck with the roof-vent cracked (no cages inside the truck). When we packed up in the morning, we discovered one of the cats missing.

We finally found her, hours later, a few blocks away, hiding under a picnic table.

Katzenjammer lived with us for 17 years.

[Paul Beardsley]

Most Unreliable Sundial

The most unreliable sundial in the world belonged to Richard Bakewell of Bakewell in Derbyshire. Bakewell continued to rely on it despite missing buses, trains, job interviews, and even his wedding because of its notorious inaccuracy.

"The man's a complete idiot," used sundial salesman Michael Maple told us when we interviewed him in his house in Bakewell (the town, not the customer). "I told him it was nothing more than a garden ornament, and that it should not in any circumstances be relied upon as a timepiece. I told him that when he bought the blooming thing! Heck, it didn't even have a gnomon!"

We stared at him blankly until he added, "You know, the bit that sticks up on the top bit."

[LurchGS]

Most Painful Scientific Name

The worlds most Painful Scientific Name award was.. .. um.. awarded to Professor Percival F. Dander in 2003.

Pro.f Dander, an Entymologist at the nearly fabled University of Eastwest Armpithair, announced his discovery of a new species of housefly to the thunderous applause of the packed house at the annual American Nit Team meeting.

"I first realized something was odd about these creatures when trying to herd flies that had apparently escaped from their cages. I pride myself on being pretty good at it." said the uncanny professor in an interview with the Globe. "I got my start herding cats, but found that flying beasties are much more difficult to contain. I saw it as a tremendous challenge." he added parenthetically.

After failing to herd the flies, the normally pacifistic professor tried other solutions - from the old bait-and-switch to turning out the light and leaving the room only to return an instant latter with a shouted "huzzah!".

Since nothing seemed to work, Dander set about attempting to destroy his prized insects. It was during this effort that he noticed something odd. While smushing most of the buzzing beasties with a fly swatter was pretty easy, there was a subset that - no matter how patient he was - always seemed to elude him. Even to the point of seeming to vanish for a while.

This caused the professor to ponder the possibilities. After short thought he hermetically sealed the entire lab in a mayonnaise jar to be carefully audited by a super-secret accounting firm, and handed over only at a specific que to Ed McMahon.

After many years of study, Professor Dander has concluded this subset of the housefly population have evolved to the point whereby they escape catastrophic crunching via fly-swatter (rolled up magazines seem to still work) by actually porting themselves through time. The pernicious pests detect the oncoming eradication device and make a short jump through time. Given that the planet, the sun, and, in fact everything in the universe is in motion (which as we all know is described by all serious scientists as "a change in relative location as measured across time"), when the flies are jumping through time, they are in fact outside the 11-dimensional framework of our universe. Ergo, when they pop back into the current time-frame, their relative position has changed. Since the jumps are so short, the spacial displacement is minimal - rarely more than a few dozen centimeters.

Through some as yet unknown property of the universe, the change in relative position attained by these time-jumping flies seems to usually put them immediately behind the fly-swatter-wielding individual. [editor's note: the abilities of these flies in regards to mechanical fly-swatting devices is still under investigation, though windshields (windscreens to you Brits) seem to be a promising lead]

The ANT meeting was hastily adjourned in order to attend the funeral of Professor Dander who died of stoning immediately following the end of his presentation, when he concluded by announcing that he had "as discoverer of this new species, I have, of course, the right of naming. I announce at this time, and for the future of the universe, these creatures shall be officially known as . . . Tempus Fugit. OW!"

[LurchGS]

Come on people, it wasn't THAT bad!