FELINE-OMENAL!
Cat that balances dice on his paw … and other bizarre record breakers
FORGET the first fourminute mile, the fastest car or even the world’s longest beard.
To get into the record books today, you have to stretch the boundaries of the human imagination as well as physical endurance.
So the latest list includes a fire-eating acrobat, a speedy sausage maker from Cavan … and a cat that can balance a tower of dice on his paw. All make it into Guinness World Records 2019, alongside a rocket man and a six-legged robot.
Bibi the black and white moggy triumphs in what is surely one of the most bizarre categories – most dice stacked on a cat’s paw. He managed to balance ten.
His owner apparently discovered the three-year-old’s talent by accident.
Bibi became an internet star after videos were posted online of him barely batting a whisker while the dice were stacked on his rear paw as he reclined on a bed at home in Malaysia.
Not to be outdone, Jessica, a nine-year-old Jack Russell, and his owner Rachael Grylls, 39, from England, set a record for the most skips by a dog and a person in one minute using a single rope: 59 skips.
Meanwhile, Cavan butcher Barry John Crowe, 28, earns his place by making 78 sausages a minute.
Mr Crowe broke the record at the Shalvey family farm in Cootehill, Co. Cavan, smashing the previous record of 60 sausages in one minute.
Englishman Tom Bagnall broke the previous fastest for a jet-propelled go-kart, achieving 180kph during filming for CBBC’s Officially Amazing.
Matt Denton, of Hampshire, makes it into the book for creating the largest rideable hexapod robot, Mantis, a two-ton machine measuring over 9ft (2.75 metres) high and 16ft (4.9 metres) in diameter, while psychology graduate Ryan Luney, 22, set the record for the most fire-breathing backflips in a minute, 14. But he has some way to go before catching up with 85year-old Betty Goedhart. The California native is the oldest performing female flying trapeze artist.
Cavan’s Barry John Crowe was delighted to get into the Guinness World Records. He had been practising for a month after RTÉ first approached him to make an attempt at beating the record during its Big Week On The Farm during April 2017. At the time, he was surprised at his own feat. ‘It came as a bit of a surprise to be asked to do it so to be able to manage it on live television is great,’ he said. ‘Having the name in the Guinness World Record is definitely a bonus!’
The record was verified by Guinness World Records adjudicator, Jack Brockbank, who stood beside Mr Crowe during his record attempt. Mr Crowe has been making sausages since he was 13, following in the footsteps of his father. O Guinness World Records 2019 is on sale today