Lamingtons, loom bands and labs, oh my!
A LOOK AT SOME OF THE STRANGEST AND BEST WORLD RECORDS, SET IN TOOWOOMBA AND BEYOND
There are very few people you meet who are not interested in hearing about a World Record.
From outlandish scientific breakthroughs to ultimate geeky collections, to the downright strange, it seems there’s something for everyone to feel amazed about.
Our own Garden City has been home to four records officially recognised by Guinness World Records:
LARGEST LAMINGTON
Possibly the best known of our held records, on June 11, 2011, the Toowoomba Chamber of Commerce and Quality Desserts made the largest lamington.
It beat the previous record by just a kilo, weighing in at 2361kg.
LARGEST WOBBLE BOARD ENSEMBLE
In August 2009, students at Harristown State High School set this record by playing Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport with 1207 participants.
The performance lasted for more than six minutes.
LONGEST LOOM BAND BRACELET BY A TEAM
This massive loom band bracelet measured in at 26,695 metres.
The record attempt was organised by Jasmine Smith to raise funds for the Leukaemia Foundation.
LONGEST RUNNING LABORATORY EXPERIMENT
Since 1927, the Pitch Drop Experiment has been running at the University of Queensland, initiated by its first physics professor Thomas Parnell.
The experiment consists of a funnel with cooled pitch inside, which slowly
drops into the reservoir below — the speed of which depends on seasonal changes in temperature and climate.
Only the ninth drop of pitch fell in 2014, so this experiment will likely run another hundred years.
Then, of course, there are those records you’ve never even thought of — both in Australia and around the world. Some of the strangest Style
magazine found are:
The largest ball pit — heaven for children and children-at-heart, over two million balls were put in the 1442.4 sq m World Ice Arena in China in 2015.
Largest gathering of people dressed as sumo wrestlers — even better, the 293 participants did a fun run in the inflatable suits in Ireland, 2015.
The longest acronym is the 56-letter NIIOMTPLABOPARMBE TZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONK ONOTDTEKHSTROMONT stands for “the laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
Longest onion cake — led by Germany’s Hans-dieter Slobodkin, this 27-metre onion cake took almost 12 hours to bake.
Most people applying facial masks — in 2017, a staggering 8298 people put on facial masks in Shanghai, China.
Heaviest mantle of bees — can you imagine having almost 640,000 bees crawling over you? That’s what China’s Ruan Liangming did with 63.7kg of the insects, including 60 queens.
Longest eyebrow hair — 81-year-old China man Zheng Shusen’s eyebrow hair measured in at a whopping 19.1cm in 2016.