Look, T.O! You made Guinness
By Mike Strobel, Toronto Sun
First posted: Monday, September 12, 2016 06:45 PM EDT | Updated: Monday, September 12, 2016 07:01 PM EDT
TORONTO - Guinness World Records 2017 has landed in bookstores. It’s full of bearded ladies, leaping llamas, bizarre body parts, and the most wooden toilet seats broken over a head in one minute (46, by a hard-headed American).
Toronto and Canada are well represented, including highest external walk on a building (CN Tower’s EdgeWalk). The title of heaviest vehicle pulled with an arm-wrestling move is held by one Kevin Fast, who arm-wrestled a fire truck a full foot last April in Cobourg.
Last year’s Toronto Waterfront Marathon sowed a bumper crop of major records, including fastest half-marathon in lederhosen, fastest half-marathon by a female in an animal costume (peacock), and fastest marathon by a woman wearing a gas mask.
You may have heard Yonge St. lost its title of World’s Longest Street a while back, when a Guinness spy discovered it really ends at Lake Simcoe, not Lake Superior as legend claimed.
Now Yonge is World’s Longest Pothole, especially the disgraceful stretch north of College St., which has claimed countless struts and shock absorbers.
For a second, after watching the opening of Queen’s Park Monday, I thought we had a shot at Largest Baboon, but Guinness says the champ, at 88 pounds, is from southern Africa.
Sadly, Toronto Councillor Gord Perks was again robbed of Noisiest Land Mammal, the winner being Latin America’s howler monkey. I’ve heard both in full voice. It’s a toss-up.
Other categories Toronto won, or should have:
World’s Most Hyperactive Mayor. John Tory broke his own record, by shaking an estimated 1,550 hands, flipping 350 pancakes, kissing seven babies, attending 112 events, giving 27 interviews, taking two helicopter tours, and making 12 impromptu speeches, all before noon and without a hair out of place.
World’s Most Patient Hockey Fans are Toronto hockey aficionados, who are suffering through the worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Guinness says it may retire the category rather than repeat it year after year.
An overgrown Australian sheep named Chris won “most wool sheared from a sheep in one shearing.” But a subcategory, “most wool pulled over Ontarians’ eyes,” goes to Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose government was also in the running for Biggest Croc.
Meanwhile, the rival Tories are honoured with “most woolly-headed moves to snatch defeat from the shears of defeat.” Speaking of Queen’s Park, not to mention City Hall and Ottawa, two pages in Guinness World Records 2017 are devoted to black holes.
Savviest septuagenarian tweeter, naturally, goes to city councillor and noted hip-hop authority Norm Kelly, 75. Stormin’ Norman had 329,000 Twitter followers as of Monday, on par with Tory and Wynne combined. No one’s sure what else Norm does, but in the social media age, does it matter?
Seems to me, TIFF-goers deserve the Most Stargazers title more than do the paltry 1,869 Australian amateur astronomers who gathered one night a year ago.
And the judges who picked David Morgan of the U.K. for Biggest Traffic Cone Collection (137 types) have never driven in downtown Toronto.
Aha! Another activity to occupy our hyperactive mayor: Counting traffic cones at rush hour.
Don’t try this at home.
mstrobel@postmedia.com
Look, T.O! You made Guinness | Strobel | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
By Mike Strobel, Toronto Sun
First posted: Monday, September 12, 2016 06:45 PM EDT | Updated: Monday, September 12, 2016 07:01 PM EDT
TORONTO - Guinness World Records 2017 has landed in bookstores. It’s full of bearded ladies, leaping llamas, bizarre body parts, and the most wooden toilet seats broken over a head in one minute (46, by a hard-headed American).
Toronto and Canada are well represented, including highest external walk on a building (CN Tower’s EdgeWalk). The title of heaviest vehicle pulled with an arm-wrestling move is held by one Kevin Fast, who arm-wrestled a fire truck a full foot last April in Cobourg.
Last year’s Toronto Waterfront Marathon sowed a bumper crop of major records, including fastest half-marathon in lederhosen, fastest half-marathon by a female in an animal costume (peacock), and fastest marathon by a woman wearing a gas mask.
You may have heard Yonge St. lost its title of World’s Longest Street a while back, when a Guinness spy discovered it really ends at Lake Simcoe, not Lake Superior as legend claimed.
Now Yonge is World’s Longest Pothole, especially the disgraceful stretch north of College St., which has claimed countless struts and shock absorbers.
For a second, after watching the opening of Queen’s Park Monday, I thought we had a shot at Largest Baboon, but Guinness says the champ, at 88 pounds, is from southern Africa.
Sadly, Toronto Councillor Gord Perks was again robbed of Noisiest Land Mammal, the winner being Latin America’s howler monkey. I’ve heard both in full voice. It’s a toss-up.
Other categories Toronto won, or should have:
World’s Most Hyperactive Mayor. John Tory broke his own record, by shaking an estimated 1,550 hands, flipping 350 pancakes, kissing seven babies, attending 112 events, giving 27 interviews, taking two helicopter tours, and making 12 impromptu speeches, all before noon and without a hair out of place.
World’s Most Patient Hockey Fans are Toronto hockey aficionados, who are suffering through the worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Guinness says it may retire the category rather than repeat it year after year.
An overgrown Australian sheep named Chris won “most wool sheared from a sheep in one shearing.” But a subcategory, “most wool pulled over Ontarians’ eyes,” goes to Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose government was also in the running for Biggest Croc.
Meanwhile, the rival Tories are honoured with “most woolly-headed moves to snatch defeat from the shears of defeat.” Speaking of Queen’s Park, not to mention City Hall and Ottawa, two pages in Guinness World Records 2017 are devoted to black holes.
Savviest septuagenarian tweeter, naturally, goes to city councillor and noted hip-hop authority Norm Kelly, 75. Stormin’ Norman had 329,000 Twitter followers as of Monday, on par with Tory and Wynne combined. No one’s sure what else Norm does, but in the social media age, does it matter?
Seems to me, TIFF-goers deserve the Most Stargazers title more than do the paltry 1,869 Australian amateur astronomers who gathered one night a year ago.
And the judges who picked David Morgan of the U.K. for Biggest Traffic Cone Collection (137 types) have never driven in downtown Toronto.
Aha! Another activity to occupy our hyperactive mayor: Counting traffic cones at rush hour.
Don’t try this at home.
mstrobel@postmedia.com
Look, T.O! You made Guinness | Strobel | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
