Today I was part of Snow Day, a charity event in Seattle that sought to break the world’s record for most participants in a snowball fight (formerly 5,387 in South Korea in 2010) in order to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club. The organizers had 162,000 pounds of snow trucked in from the Cascades, and after about two hours of informal snowball fighting, the Guinness people carefully observed the crowd for 60 seconds and determined that 5,811 of us were throwing enough snowballs to be considered participants and the record was broken. I may have been just a small part of it, but it was the most fun I’ve ever had in the snow, and now I get to tell people I’m a Guinness world record holder.
Anyone else out there participated in an event like this, or achieved a world record on their own?
We tried it in high school. A school club, I forget which one, tried to beat the record for pushing people continuously in a shopping cart. Or maybe it was in a carriage but we used a shopping cart. We were at it day and night, going around and around the running track, I forget for how long. It failed to be recognized though, as we’d not followed some rule or other.
Back in the 70s, I attempted to balance 40 or so quarters on my elbow in a stack, then quickly snap them up with my hand. It would have been a world record too, but apparently US quarters were smaller than what the book had in mind. There was no way I was going to be able to grab that many half dollar or dollar size coins, so I didn’t even bother.
Second was most couples hugging. That was oddly not fun, as the organizers were really stressy about it. And our record only stood for about 3 seconds before it was blown out of the books.
Yes, I participated in a record attempt. I joined a Facebook group that was trying for the Guinness record of being the largest Facebook group. I don’t know (or care) if it succeeded.
Longest continuous pool playing.
Sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s.
I was part of a DeMolay group that played pool for 600 or 700 hours (I can’t remember). We beat the previous record by a few days and I think our record fell within a year.
I have. Guinness do not, as a rule, note records concerning the intake of alcohol, but this was about the largest number of people taking part in a malt whisky tasting, not how much each of us drank, which wasn’t much anyway. I’m told we made it, but I never checked the book.
As it happens some other bar owner heard about it and tried to beat our record. Unfortunately for him there was something wrong with his papers, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but in the end he lost his license to sell alcohol.
Yes, it was for the largest single gathering of simultaeous firebreathers. It took place at Stonehenge and was filmed for the Guinness 50th anniversary show so I’ve got a GWR certificate and I’ve been on telly too.
My dog and I were involved in the world’s largest dog obedience lesson in Houston, a few years back. Think there was a few hundred of us. I still have the T-shirt for it somewhere.
The record has since been broken and the latest one I can find is by Felcan in Valencia, Spain, on April 22, 2012, with 390 pairs of dogs and people. (Use google to find the reference and then use the cache to view it.)
This past October, I participated in the annual Arcadia Festival Zombie Walk in Kalamazoo, MI. They attempted to break the Guiness World Record for most Zombies gathered. We were trying to break the record of 4,093 set in Asbury Park, N.J., on Oct. 30, 2010, but we came up 107 zombies short.
We could have broken the record if there weren’t some problems. There were many there who did not dress up like zombies, including the organizers, the band hired to entertain us, and others. There were children there dressed up, but their parents were not.
Overall it was fun, but I think the organizers could have done a better job of promoting the event.
I haven’t been to yours yet but its on my list. I did the Dorney Park Invasion with the Asbury and Philly Walks and it was fantastic. Asbury has such a great machine/team promoting things that they are going to be tough to beat. We (Pittsburgh) are going more the “Fest” route now. Between that, the walk and the motorcycle run it makes a fun day of leaking blood all over the city.
Yes! It was an attempt at the “largest kazoo ensemble.”
No idea if it was successful, still stands, or how precisely lots of people playing the kazoo honors Jerry Garcia. I do, however, still have my orange kazoo.
