# Does anybody have a Guinness Book of World Records?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 27, 2000, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437 "2000-04-27T00:23:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ThisYearsGirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisYearsGirl)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/1 "2000-04-27T00:23:00Z")
I can’t find this on the internet, believe it or not, but I need to know–who has the world record for holding their breath the longest, and what was their time?
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"A man can’t turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved. What did Shakespeare say? “Cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave man… only 500”?
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### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/2 "2000-04-27T08:21:00Z")
[ ](http://www.recordholders.org/images/bikeviol.jpg)
This is one of the funniest I cam across during my search: cycling backwards whilst playing the violin. For 60 kilometres!
Anyway… Amazon says the Guinness Book of World Records is currently out of stock and that buyers have to wait for a re-print.
From a diving site:
> [@](#):
>
> they have reached a point where they can hold their breath for more than seven minutes. How? It’s partly down to the mammalian diving reflex. Howard, for example, can reduce his heartbeat to less than 20 beats per minute due to this quirk of nature.
See here: [http://www.divernet.com/compet/free998.htm](http://www.divernet.com/compet/free998.htm)
Also, same site:
> [@](#):
>
> There are major safety concerns over this part of the competition. After all, the athletes are going to hold their breath to the point where their brain will be starved of oxygen. What follows is the possibility of blackout. And then death.
> The day goes ahead with a total of eight blackouts. It is an odd sight, grown men and
> women taking it in turns to play at killing brain cells. This event has got to go.
I’d say so… sheesh, what a bunch of idiots!
That’s all I managed to find though… no URL for the Guinness Book of world records, although you could try the Guinness site at [www.guinness.ie](http://www.guinness.ie) (it didn’t work here at work, probably a firewall thing).
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**Defect borg:
_“Refutile is sistance. Your ass will be simulated”._**
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**WallyM7** on Coldfire:
_ **"Yeah, he knows a little about everything because they have a good prison library."** _
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### Author:  [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/3 "2000-04-27T08:28:00Z")
The official site for the Guiness Book of World Records is [www.guinessrecords.com.](http://www.guinessrecords.com.) Don’t bother going there to look for the answer to your question, though. The site seems primarily devoted to hawking the book. No freebies.
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### Author:  [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/4 "2000-04-27T08:30:00Z")
Whoops. I stuck a period at the end of that URL. [www.guinessrecords.com](http://www.guinessrecords.com)
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### Author:  [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/5 "2000-04-27T08:31:00Z")
GRRRRR! Of course the period doesn’t matter when I spelled it wrong in the first place!
[www.guinnessrecords.com](http://www.guinnessrecords.com)
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/6 "2000-04-27T08:35:00Z")
I just checked my copy of the book, and there doesn’t seem to be any entry for holding one’s breath. I suspect this is deliberate. They don’t like to list records that it’s dangerous to try to break.
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2000, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-have-a-guinness-book-of-world-records/16437/7 "2000-04-27T15:07:00Z")
Right idea, but the URL is really special for the book [most of it], but Im feeling generous, so here it is: [http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/demos/gbwr](http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/demos/gbwr)
Description:
The record dive with scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) is 133 m 437 ft by John J.
Gruener and R. Neal Watson (US) off Freeport, Grand Bahama on 14 October 1968. For women it is
105.16 m 345 ft by Marty Dunwoody (US) off Bimini, Bahama Islands on 20 December 1987. The record
dive utilizing gas mixtures (nitrogen, oxygen and helium) is a simulated dive of 685.8 m 2,250 ft in a dry
chamber by Stephen Porter, Len Whitlock and Erik Kramer at Duke University Medical Center in Durham,
NC on 3 February 1981 in a 43-day trial in a sphere of 2.43 m 8 ft. A team of six divers (four Comex and
two French Navy) descended and worked efficiently during a period of six days to a depth of 520 m 1,706 ft
off Marseilles, France as part of the Hydra VIII operation in ths spring of 1988. This involved the use of
‘hydreliox,’ a synthetic breathing mixture containing a high percentage of hydrogen. The record depth for the
extremely dangerous activity of breath-held diving is 107 m 351 ft by Angela Bandini (Italy) off Elba, Italy on
3 October 1989. She was underwater for 2 min 46 sec. Arnaud de Nechaud de Feral performed a saturation
dive of 73 days from 9 October-21 December 1989 in a hyperbaric chamber simulating a depth of 300 m 985
ft, as part of the Hydra IX operation carried out by Comex at Marseilles, France. He was breathing ‘hydrox,’ a
mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.
Who:
Gruener J J / Watson R N / Dunwoody M / Porter S / Whitlock L / Kramer E
Town:
Freeport / Bimini / Marseilles / Durham
Area:
North Carolina
Country:
Bahamas / USA / France
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“‘How do you know I’m mad’ said Alice.
'You must be, ’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”