by Matthew Ward
Held by Boris the bear, Leningradsky Zoopark, Leningrad, USSR. Carried aboard Sputnik 2 1⁄2, launched by Soviet Space Program. Though the capsule contained only a few days’ worth of food and oxygen, and though it has been confirmed with near certainty that Sputnik 2 1⁄2 burned up in Earth’s atmosphere three weeks after launch, Soviet officials insist that Boris is still orbiting the earth and conducting “extensive outer space research.” Indeed, whenever a shooting star crosses the sky, Russian fathers routinely raise their arms in salute and tell their children to “wave to Boris.”
WORLD’S SMALLEST MOOSE:
26 LBS., 7 OZ. (FULL GROWN)
Held by Little Monty, a pygmy moose on exhibit at the Anchorage Animal Refuge of Alaska, until his untimely death. Taxidermal remains in the private collection of Charles & Eliza Whipple. Unfortunately for Little Monty, one of the other animals on exhibit was the World’s Largest Eagle.
WORLD’S LARGEST MOUSE:
11 LBS., 2 OZ.
Held by Big Stanley, the cheese thief of New South Wales. Taxidermal remains in the private collection of Charles & Eliza Whipple. The date of Big Stanley’s capture is still celebrated as “End-of-Tyranny Tuesday” in cheese shops across southeastern Australia.
HIGHEST HAMSTER-PILOTED MODEL-ROCKET LAUNCH EVER RECORDED: 1,732 FT.
Rocket built by Simon and Cordelia Whipple. Hamster training and rocket launch by Cordelia and Abigail Whipple. Piloted by Corporal Whiskerton, a hamster in the care of the Whipple family. Corporal Whiskerton is currently undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.
MOST FIREFLIES EMPLOYED IN SPELLING OUT A FLOATING MESSAGE: 2,591
Insect-wrangled by Penelope Whipple. (Message: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!) The art of firefly wrangling is notoriously difficult, as all training must take place at night, in order for the trainer to see her performers—and to comply with the strict firefly-labor laws recently initiated by the SPLI (Society for the Protection of Luminous Insects).
WORLD’S CREAMIEST COW: 5.24% AVERAGE MILK FAT
Held by “Ample” Agnes, a Jersey cow in the care of Charles & Eliza Whipple. The Whipples have reported several attempts by so-called cream fiends to steal their prized cow, but the suspects have all been quickly captured due to the slow foot-speed, shortness of breath, and difficulty squeezing through car doors that is commonly attributed to cream addicts.
FABULOUS FOODS
MOST FRANKFURTERS EATEN IN ONE MINUTE: 7
Held by Beatrice Whipple. According to current regulations, both frankfurter and bun must be eaten, though they need not be eaten at the same time. Pureeing the two together and drinking the mixture through a funnel, however, is now strictly prohibited in light of Dan “Chug-it” Chugston’s stomach rupture at ’Furter Fest XIV.
LARGEST BOWL OF MUESLI BROUGHT TO TABLE BY ELEPHANTS: 3,247 GALLONS
Cereal prepared by Samuel (Sammy “the Spatula”) Smith. Elephant team led by Phoolendu Mahankali and his elephant associate, Shiva. Commissioned by Charles & Eliza Whipple. During the hectic training season leading up to the Synchronized Swimming Masters, this time-saving contrivance allowed the Whipples to combine their morning breakfast with their morning swim.
MOST GRAVY DROPPED BY CROPDUSTER AT ONE TIME:
852 GALLONS
Gravy prepared by Samuel (Sammy “the Spatula”) Smith. Dropped from aircraft by Wilhelm von Kleve. Commissioned by Charles & Eliza Whipple. After its role in their Christmas dinner, the Whipples returned the cropduster to the farmer they had borrowed it from, who went on to harvest the best-selling potato crop of his farm’s hundred-year history. Unfortunately, he was never able to replicate the subtle yet distinctive gravy-flavor of those potatoes, and business promptly fell off again.
LARGEST SINGLE PIECE OF FRENCH TOAST: 15′2″ X 13′8″ X 1′5.5″
Prepared by Samuel (Sammy “the Spatula”) Smith. Lowered from aircraft by Wilhelm von Kleve. Commissioned by Charles & Eliza Whipple. Agent of the Whipples’ infamous “French Toast Fiasco” and possible harbinger of the deadly “Lyon’s Curse,” but reportedly delicious.
DENSEST CAKE EVER BAKED: 1 OZ. PER CUBIC INCH (63 LBS., 7.3 OZ. TOTAL WEIGHT)
Baked by Samuel (Sammy “the Spatula”) Smith. Commissioned by Charles & Eliza Whipple. During his first stint in prison, Sammy the Spatula reportedly used a cake from a similar recipe to fend off an assassin from rival cooking gang the Rolling Pins.
WORLD’S MOST INTRICATE CHEESE SCULPTURE
Carved by Jean-Marc Raclette. Commissioned by Charles & Eliza Whipple. After studying at Coupe le Fromage, the prestigious cheese-sculpting academy, Monsieur Raclette became disillusioned with the snobbish world of cheese art, until his passion was rekindled by a cheese-shop owner’s daughter, who sculpted purely for the joy of it. The two were married one month later, and Jean-Marc’s now-exuberant cheese-sculpture style could soon be seen in galleries and cheese museums across the globe.
WORLD’S LARGEST BIRTHDAY CAKE: 30′4.5″ (DIAMETER) X 19′10.25″(HEIGHT)
Baked by Samuel (Sammy “the Spatula”) Smith. Commissioned by Charles & Eliza Whipple for the 18th Annual Whipple Birthday Extravaganza. The cake was planned to be served alongside a small water tower filled with ice cream. Unfortunately, neither would ever be served at all.
WORLD’S RAREST SPICE: LESS THAN 1 LB. PRODUCED PER YEAR
Held by mountain rock saffron. Only saffron flowers grown in granite fissures at an elevation of five thousand feet or higher may be harvested.
WORLD’S SHARPEST KITCHEN KNIVES
Held by the Drake® X-Calibre Series. Capable of preparing “split hog-hair soup” in less than half the time of the IX Series.
MOST PEOPLE HOSPITALIZED AFTER INGESTING CANDIED JELLYFISH AT A SINGLE EVENT: 114
Held by Unsafe Sports Showdown XXIII. “Totally worth it,” croaked unsafe sports fan, Bradley Dultz, from the intensive care unit.
WORLD’S LARGEST BATCH OF POPCORN: 1.02 TONS
Executed by King Kernel’s Popcorn Emporium at its grand opening ceremony. Unfortunately, the giant mass of popcorn left no room for any popcorn cus-tomers, and King Kernel’s was forced to permanently shut its doors two days later.
WORLD’S BUBBLIEST CHAMPAGNE: 62 MILLION BUBBLES/BOTTLE (82,667 BUBBLES/ML)
Held by Le Hoquet Sophistiqué, a champagne produced by Bulle & Bouche. The beverage of choice for hiccup connoisseurs.
MOST LOAVES OF BONE-BREAD BAKED IN FOUR HOURS: 68
Baked by the “Jack-Killers” in the team event at the 54th Annual Giant’s Day Bake-Off. According to recent regulations, no less than two-thirds of the bones ground up to make bone-bread must be animal bones.
DAUNTING DURATIONS
LONGEST CONTINUOUS TIME PLAYING AN ACCORDION: 7 DAYS, 5 HRS., 19 MIN., 4.473 SEC.
Held by Simon Whipple. The previous record of 6 days, 22 hours was broken at the 9th Annual Polka-thon, during which three brave polka-dancers tragically lost their lives due to extreme exhaustion. “They would not have wanted to go any other way,” said a spokesperson from the Bohemian Polka Coalition.
LONGEST TIME TO STAY IN BED: 53 YRS., 81 DAYS, 46 MIN.
Held by “Inert” Burt Torpidson. Though he could not work a regular job, Mr. Torpidson was able to pay his monthly bills with a sizable sponsorship deal from the maker of his mattress, the Sleepyhead Mattress Company, who used Torpidson’s likeness alongside the slogan, “You’ll never want to leave your bed, with a mattress from Sleepyhead!®”
LONGEST TIME TO HANG AN UNSUPPORTED SPOON FROM NOSE: 2 HRS., 27 MIN., 36 SEC.
Held by George Whipple. George claims he could have kept the spoon hanging longer had he not been struck by a sudden, uncontrollable craving for soup.
FANTASTIC FEATS
HIGHEST NUMBER OF MATCHING OUTFITS WORN BY A STUFFED TOY AND ITS OWNER: 441
Held by Ivy Whipple and her stuffed bear, Mr. Growls. The year they launched their record campaign, Ivy and Mr. Growls were the talk of Junior Fashion Week, with every style-consc
ious toddler scrambling to snatch up a teddy bear and as many miniature outfits as possible, causing a global run on both commodities.
MOST DOMINOES SINGLE-HANDEDLY TOPPLED: 378,000
Held by Mervyn McCleary. The total might have been nearer to 500,000 had a small owl not flown into the building a mere four days before the attempt and knocked over a large section of the setup. Mr. McCleary was forced to shoot the bird before it could do any further damage. Fortunately, the remaining setup was enough to earn him the world record. But Mervyn swears he has been stalked by owls ever since.
FASTEST TIME TO SWALLOW A SCHOOL BUS: 7 MOS., 3 DAYS,
8 HRS., 23 MIN.
Held by Hans Hungrig. Little Lars Fruehauf made a narrow escape after falling asleep unnoticed at the back of the bus during its final drop-off rounds on the day of its donation to Herr Hungrig’s record attempt. Luckily, the boy was awoken at the last minute by the sound of crunching metal.
LONGEST TIME TO JUGGLE FIVE CIRCULAR SAW BLADES WITH BARE HANDS: 42 MIN., 7.67 SEC.
Held by Nicholas “Nine-Digits” Dyson. When Nicholas Dyson, a notorious womanizer, “accidentally” severed his ring finger, it proved to be the last straw for his wife, who finally left him after fourteen years of marriage.
FIRST HUMAN RESCUE BY ROCKET PACK EVER RECORDED
Held by Rex Goldwin (for his rescue of Charles Whipple at the 18th Annual Whipple Birthday Extravaganza). One year earlier, an elderly, gadget-collecting millionaire attempted to rescue his hula dancer fiancée after she got herself stranded at the top of a volcano. Unfortunately, the weight of the second passenger proved too much for the prototype pack as they flew over the crater, and unfortunately, the volcano was live.
LARGEST PRIVATE COIN COLLECTION: 58,247 COINS
Held by Penny Heeps. An ardent world traveler, Ms. Heeps amassed most of her collection by checking under every couch cushion she came across, from Cairo to Kalamazoo.
WORLD’S MOST TATTOOED MAN: 99.9% SKIN COVERAGE
Held by the Cannibal King of Manawatu. Unlike some more barbaric adherents to his distinctive diet, the Cannibal King only partakes of willing volunteers, as noted on their “cannibal donor” cards.
LARGEST PRIVATE COLLECTION OF MILITARY PROTOTYPES: 948 UNIQUE MODELS
Collected by Rex Goldwin. Collection includes both the World’s First Heat-Seeking Missile and the World’s First Heat-Seeking-Missile-Seeking Missile, which were developed simultaneously by Herman Canceler (a shrewd but well-intentioned weapons engineer) to be sold to opposing armies.
LISTING MOST SYNONYMS IN ONE HOUR: 5,842 (FOR 631 ORIGINAL WORDS)
Held by Felicity Joy Bliss. Miss Bliss’s parents had been preparing their daughter ever since birth for this one event.
MOST BANANA PEELS SENT VIA POSTAL SERVICE IN THREE
YEARS: 34,021
Held by Bonnie Prince Bobo, the rocket-sticking chimpanzee. Despite his continued need for retribution, Bonnie Prince Bobo has gradually toned down his methods as he has matured. Indeed, what he used to send to his enemies was much worse.
MOST TIMES TO TOSS A BABY AT A DISTANCE OF THREE YARDS WITHOUT DROPPING: 406
Held by Katsu & Yukiko Nakamoto, with their 7-week-old son, Kichiro. Little Kichiro soon grew accustomed to the tossing motion and wound up sleeping through most of the attempt. Even as a boy, he often could not fall asleep without his parents tossing him back and forth a few hundred times.
ART & MUSIC
HIGHEST NOTE EVER SUNG IN LIVE PERFORMANCE: F#7
Held by Lenora Whipple. A complimentary eyeglass-repair kiosk was set up in the foyer for all ticket holders.
FASTEST FAMILY PORTRAIT PAINTED ON THE HEAD OF A PIN: 4 MIN., 32 SEC.
Held by Charlotte Whipple. In order to render as much detail as possible, Charlotte has teamed up with her sister Penelope to produce an extensive line of handcrafted flea-hair brushes.
MOST LOGGED HOURS OF RADIO AIRTIME: 45,266
Held by “Nonstop” Norman Prattle. Of Nonstop Norman’s over 45,000 hours, only about 20,000 were spent saying anything other than his own name.
HIGHEST SELLING LIMBLESS ORCHESTRA OF ALL TIME: 3,692,011 ALBUMS SOLD
Held by Johnny Stump & the Missing Limbs. For perspective, this figure gives Johnny Stump more albums sold per limb than all but the top three normal-limbed band leaders in the world.
SHORTEST RUNNING BROADWAY SHOW IN HISTORY: 33 MIN., 14 SEC.
Held by Cleopatra’s Cats! Forced to shut down halfway through act I on opening night after the record-breaking salary of its leading lady, Bianca Bainbridge, bankrupted the production.
LONGEST CONTINUOUS BOX-STEP: 46 HRS., 18 MIN.
Held by Jonathan “Rug-Cutter” Rutman. The undeniable master of the box-step, Mr. Rutman freely admits, “I still have so much to learn.”
MEDICAL SCIENCES
YOUNGEST PROVISIONAL BRAIN SURGEON: 12 YRS., 327 DAYS OLD
Held by Cordelia Whipple. Cordelia won the coveted post by presenting a twelve-foot scale model of the human nervous system constructed out of tongue depressors.
WORLD’S RAREST STRAIN OF MALARIA: 1 DIAGNOSED CASE
Plasmodium vere malus, contracted by Mrs. Griselda Scrubb (former housekeeper to the Whipple family). Though Mrs. Scrubb has baffled doctors with her contraction of this exotic and impossibly rare disease, many observers have attributed her misfortune to her exceedingly ill temper. Indeed, parents have begun using the Scrubb story to illustrate the axiom “what goes around comes around” to bad-tempered children around the world.
MOST AGGRESSIVE STRAIN OF FLESH-EATING BACTERIA EVER RECORDED: 3.5 SQ. IN. PER HR.
Held by Bacteroides ravenus. Contracted by Geoffrey Dwindle. After his ordeal was over, Mr. Dwindle attempted to make the best of a bad situation by patenting and marketing a revolutionary new weight-loss program, the Dwindle Method: “Guaranteed to drop two sizes in two days, or your money back!®”
COMMERCE & INDUSTRY
MOST VOLUMES SOLD BY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA SALESMAN: 40,823
Held by Dustin “Dusty” Paige-Hocker. Mr. Paige-Hocker gained the loyalty of his vast clientele by personally delivering every volume he sold. After suffering severe herniation to several discs in his spine, however, he was forced to switch products and retired as a bookmark salesman.
MOST SHOES COBBLED UNDERCOVER IN A SINGLE NIGHT: 104
Held by Santino Scarpa (a.k.a. the Little Shoe Saint). Identified only by the signature “S†S” etched into the sole of every shoe he cobbled, the Little Shoe Saint ended his covert cobbling career suddenly and without explanation seventeen years after his mark first began turning up overnight in the shops of struggling shoemakers. (The timing of his disappearance, it may be noted, does happen to coincide with a certain incident, in which Barnaby Shelton, owner of Shelton’s Fine Shoes & Shotguns, was awoken by strange noises and ventured downstairs to find a diminutive intruder rifling through his workshop. Shelton managed to get a shot off, but the mysterious man promptly jumped through a window and vanished, heavily bleeding, into the night.)
WINNINGEST LEGAL TEAM IN THE WORLD: 98.4% OF TOTAL CASES WON
Held by the offices of Bleader & Leach. Unfortunately, many of Bleader & Leach’s clients have been acquitted, only to be forced into a life of crime in order to pay off the firm’s record-breaking fees.
CRIME & PUNISHMENT
HEAVIEST LOAD OF STOLEN CAVIAR SEIZED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT: 1,138 LBS., 2.6 OZ.
Seized from the possession of Samuel (Sammy “the Spatula”) Smith. Seizure orchestrated by Chief Inspector Hadrian Ulysses Smudge. Mr. Smith’s contraband caviar would likely have gone undetected by law enforcement had his mouth not been full of the stuff when Chief Inspector Smudge turned up unannounced to question him. Sammy promptly choked, and the next moment, Smudge was wiping irrefutable evidence off his own face.
MOST SOLVED CRIMINAL CASES IN HISTORY: 1,104
Held by Inspector Hadrian Ulysses Smudge. Inspector Smudge got his start in crime-fighting when he reported a w
oman for taking one more parsnip than she had paid for at the local market. After being released from jail five days later, his mother finally forgave him.
YOUNGEST MURDERESS TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON: 11 YRS., 254 DAYS OLD
Held by “Mean” Mina Morton. Convicted of murdering five members of the motorcycle gang the Demon Dogs, after they allegedly laughed at her pink bicycle. Miss Morton left a note in her cell claiming she’d escaped to “finish the job.” The remaining Demon Dogs are now believed to be in the United States Witness Protection Program.
WORLD’S YOUNGEST CRIME-SOLVING SLEUTH: 12 YRS., 54 DAYS
Held by Skip “Naptime” Nelson. Though Skip had solved many household mysteries throughout his early years, such as “The Mystery of the Empty Ice Cream Carton” and “The Mystery of the Older Sister’s Locked Diary,” it wasn’t until after his twelfth birthday that he solved his first actual crime, when he single-handedly apprehended the “Seven Counties Axe-Slayer.”
MORE SUCCESSFUL ARRESTS PER MEMBER THAN ANY OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT UNIT ON THE PLANET: 582 ARRESTS PER MEMBER PER YR.
Held by the Commissioner’s Execution Squad. The Commissioner’s Execution Squad was first assembled to track down and arrest Matthew Murky and the Murky Water Gang, who, after carrying out the Largest Bank Robbery in History, had evaded capture for forty-six days by escaping into the sewers. In under twenty minutes on the job, the Execution Squad recovered the missing loot and dragged out eight of the fourteen robbers alive. The other six robbers they simply dragged out.
MOST SUSPECTS TERMINATED WHILE RESISTING ARREST BY A SINGLE LAW ENFORCEMENT UNIT: 379 TERMINATIONS PER MEMBER PER YR.
Held by the Commissioner’s Execution Squad.* This second record has led to the Execution’s Squad’s unofficial motto: “You can’t scramble up the rotten without breaking a few bad eggs.”
AWARDS & CORONATIONS
WORLD’S YOUNGEST LIVING MONARCH: 6 YRS., 143 DAYS OLD