Ozzy Osbourne Pumpkin Mosaic Breaks Guinness World Record for Halloween

This is batty! 

A UK farm honored the Prince of Darkness, fittingly for Halloween – and broke a world record. Sunnyfields Farm in Southampton paid homage to Ozzy Osbourne the late Black Sabbath singer by arranging hundreds of their home-grown pumpkins and squashes in his image to earn the title of largest cucurbita mosaic, according to Guinness World Records. 

The over-the-top creation – which features the late Black Sabbath frontman in his signature shades with bats flying around him – is a staggering 2,281 square feet, which is roughly the size of a tennis court. 

When the record-breaking mosaic made its big reveal, Osbourne’s longtime wife, Sharon, and their daughter, Kelly, joined in the celebration. 

The farm posted a video of the making of the masterpiece on Instagram with his debut hit solo “Crazy Train” in the background – and the rocker’s famous quote, “I can’t do anything in moderation”, as the caption.

Liverpool put a miserable run behind them with a dominant performance to end Real Madrid's perfect Champions League start with a 1-0 win at Anfield on Tuesday. 

Alexis Mac Allister gave Liverpool the lead after 61 minutes with a header from Dominik Szoboszlai's free-kick.

The Reds went toe-to-toe against the Spanish giants, squared off with full confidence, landed every punch and got the job done! It can be said that Liverpool, to a man, were outstanding! 💪💪💪

They had lost six of their last eight games in all competitions, but stopped the rot by beating Aston Villa on Saturday, as Arne Slot, thankfully, resorted to a more tried and trusted team selection. Indeed, sanity has returned to Slot!

Florian Wirtz replaced Cody Gakpo in the only change from the weekend, and Liverpool again looked more like the side that stormed to the Premier League title last season.

Both sides are now tied on nine points from their opening four games of the league phase.

Fresh Sounds Coming From Austria's Vegetable Orchestra

They’ve got the beet! 

For the last 27 years, the eleven members of the Vegetable Orchestra in Vienna, Austria, have been playing with their food. 

They're a touring orchestra and they've earned a Guinness World Record having performed 344 concerts on their veggies, and officially becoming the uncontested record holders for most concerts by a vegetable orchestra.

This unorthodox band prepare for their concerts by hollowing out carrots and celery, peeling onion skins and cutting aubergines (brinjals/eggplants), and piling up fresh produce onstage to create their distinctive sounds. 

Some of their classics include the carrot recorder, a cucumberphone, percussive pieces of aubergine or even a leek violin. The performers purchase all of the vegetables fresh the day of their performance, and the audience can see in live-time how the sounds of the instruments change as they break and dry out in the stage lights.

“We believe that we can produce sound that cannot be (easily) produced by other instruments. You can hear the difference. It sometimes sounds like animals, sometimes just like abstract sounds”, say the Orchestra. “You can say that the vegetables’ 'hidden' inside sound life is brought to the surface and made visual during the performance”.

The innovative group is constantly inventing new instruments — and they have to be prepared to improvise, since the vegetables can break or dry out while they are on stage.

Naturally, these instruments are pretty single-use, so the band have a chef that turns all the unused vegetables into a soup for the concert-goers to enjoy after the performance. 

The musicians – who come from backgrounds in genres like electronic, rock, punk and classical – hope to show audiences that music can be created from just about anything.

Celtic booked their place in the last four when they won 2-0 over Hibernian in a keenly contested Scottish Cup quarter-final yesterday. 

Daizen Maeda pounced on a rebound to net from close range in the 39th minute for his 14th goal in 13 matches, and 28th for the season. And fellow substitute Luke McCowan set up Adam Idah for a tidy finish from a tight angle in second-half stoppage time. 

And so, Celtic are on track for the domestic treble. They've already won the Scottish League Cup; they have an unassailable lead in the Scottish Premiership; and they've booked a semi-final spot in the Scottish Cup.

Fastest Time To Sort Peanut M&Ms World Record

On May 03, 2024, an American put his color-coding skills to the test and broke the Guinness World Record by sorting 17.6 ounces (500g) of Peanut M&M's by color. 

 

David Rush of Boise, Idaho, previously set the Peanut M&M-sorting record at 1 minute and 14 seconds, but his title was later taken by someone who managed the task two seconds faster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rush said he was determined to break the record by completing the color sorting in under one minute. 

 

"My journey was filled with hilarious obstacles, like my daughter adding water to my M&Ms and my sons making the supplies magically disappear, leading to multiple trips to the store". 

 

But he persevered and he was able to recapture the record, and exceed his personal goal in 57.78 seconds.

 

 

 

Yesterday, Celtic continued their unbeaten start to the Scottish Premiership season – and stay level with Aberdeen at the summit – after an ultimately comfortable 2-0 triumph over Dundee. 

 

Fifty-six minutes on and Brendan Rodgers was forced to call in the cavalry and made a triple sub. Just four minutes later, Alistair Johnston made it two goals from two games by tapping home Yang Hyun-Jun's cross. And then, Arne Engels made it two seven minutes after that when he calmly converted from the spot after Kyogo Furuhashi won a penalty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the same day too, Liverpool advanced to the quarter-finals in their English League Cup title defense with a 3-2 victory against Brighton & Hove Albion.

 

All five goals came in the second half, with Cody Gakpo making the most of his opportunity in attack with two fine strikes (46, 63). Luis Diaz restored Liverpool’s two-goal advantage in the 85th minute after the other side's effort four minutes earlier, and the Seagulls' stoppage-time goal proved to be in vain.

 

 

The Tiniest Rubik’s Cube

Japanese toymaker MegaHouse unveil a miniature Rubik’s Cube – one so tiny that you will need a pair of tweezers to solve it.

 

Each face of the cube, which is made from aluminum, measures about five millimeters (around 0.2 inches) across. It was made available for pre-order on the manufacturer’s website on Thursday, with deliveries expected next April.

 

Weighing just 0.3 grams (about 0.01 ounces), the puzzle is about a 1,000th of the size of the original, which measures around 2.2 inches across each face. And each side of the nine squares on the device’s six faces measures just 1.6 millimeters (around 0.06 inches).

 

MegaHouse told CNN that the company started conceptualizing it four years ago and began the process to produce it in 2022.

 

Guinness World Record confirmed the micro-cube as the world’s smallest rotating puzzle cube in August. 

 

But the price tag suggests it’s likely to be a collector’s item rather than the kind of cube that players fiddle with on the go. They are being sold at 777,777 yen ($5,320), and each comes with a stand declaring it the “World’s record smallest Rubik’s Cube”. 

 

The release coincides with the 50th anniversary of the rotating puzzle, which counts amateur hobbyists and professional mathematicians among its huge following. Over 500 million cubes have been sold since Hungarian inventor Ernő Rubik created it in 1974. 

 

In today's Premier League match between Liverpool and Crystal Palace, the former could only squeeze out a 1-0 win. 

 

A super pass from Kostas Tsimikas found Cody Gakpo on the left-hand side and the Dutch forward squared it across for the onrushing Diogo Jota to stab home in the ninth minute.

 

Three points anyway and the Reds go four points clear at the top.

 

And Arne Slot is the first Liverpool manager in history to win his first four away league games in charge and his opening five in all competitions. I'm just glad he didn't whine like Jürgen Klopp did when there is a game that has a 12:30 PM kick off.

Health Advice From 100-year-olds

The health and lifestyle choices of the world’s oldest people should not be taken as a blueprint for longevity for others, Richard Faragher, a professor of biogerontology at the UK’s University of Brighton warned. 😄😄😄

 

According to the scientist, the question of why some people live to 100 and some don’t is still debated. Most experts point to either luck or good genetics as the likely reasons for longevity. He stressed, however, that experts agree on one thing – people who want to live longer should “never, ever take health and lifestyle tips from a centenarian”.

 

Really? I would have thought these people having gone through long lives should know better! 

 

The caution comes just days after the passing of the world’s oldest woman, Maria Branyas Morera, who died in her sleep at the age of 117 on August 19. Morera attributed her longevity to “order, tranquility… no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people”. Her demise was preceded by the death of the world’s oldest man, 114-year-old Juan Vicente Perez Mora, this April. Mora’s secret to a long life was to “work hard, rest on holidays, go to bed early,” and to “drink a glass of aguardiente [a strong alcoholic drink] every day”.

 

In an interview with The Guardian published on Saturday, Faragher said that, like Morera and Mora, most centenarians do not speak of exercise or healthy diet when commenting on their long lives. He noted that some of the world’s oldest people admit they were smokers and drank alcohol freely, which “flies in the face of a lot of epidemiological evidence we have on how to extend your healthy life expectancy”. 

 

“Merely because you have survived smoking 60 a day doesn’t mean that smoking 60 a day is good for you… The fact that [centenarians] do many of these unhealthy things and still just coast through says they’re either lucky or typically very well endowed”, Faragher (left) asserted.

 

Following Morera’s passing, the oldest living person in the world has become 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka of Ashiya, Japan who was born on May 23, 1908, according to the US Gerontology Research Group. She enjoys the simple pleasure of eating bananas and starts her day with her favorite drink, Calpis (a Japanese milk-based soft drink). The oldest person to have ever lived was France’s Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, according to Guinness. And she had shared that wine was her secret to longevity. 

 

If I may, I would add Coca-Cola to the list. [Remember... Coke's 1976 slogan was "Coke adds life"].

 

World's Largest Collection of Fossilized Poop

You might have been to some incredible museums – but have you ever been to a 'poo-seum'? 

Well, the first-of-its-kind 'Poozeum' is in the US, and features thousands of pieces of poo from different animals throughout history. But don't worry about the smell – all the items are fossilized, so you won't need to hold your nose! 

The Poozeum was set up by George Frandsen, who holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of fossilized poo. 

[Note: The scientific name for a piece of fossilized poo is a coprolite. Coprolites can give scientists clues about what kinds of food an animal ate]. 

Frandsen (left) actually began collecting fossils of poo when he was a teenager, finding them both funny and interesting. He opened the Poozeum in 2014 as an online resource while donating pieces of his exhibit to museums across the US. 

Frandsen said the “enthusiastic response” to the early stages of the Poozeum motivated him to open the physical location in the Arizona city of Williams in May of this year to address the “glaring absence of coprolite representation” in natural history museums.

He now has over 8,000 pieces in his collection, including that of dinosaurs and a renowned 67.5cm (127-inch) sample of carnivore coprolite dubbed "Barnum".

Sydney Retiree Drinks to World Record

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A 69-year-old retiree visited 120 pubs in 24 hours and drinking to a Guinness World Record on April 12, 2024. 

 

David Clarkson (above photo on the left) who was born in Britain but has lived in Australia for over forty years, started his attempt with a drink at the Captain Cook Hotel in Sydney. 

 

Clarkson walked to 119 more establishments over the course of the following 24 hours, ordering a drink at each stop. Guinness World Records Adjudicator Pete Fairbairn joined Clarkson for the first four and final four hours of his attempt. Other witnesses accompanied Clarkson during the middle period of his pub crawl, collecting evidence for Fairbairn to review at the end of the day. 

 

Clarkson's attempt came to an end at the Sussex Garden Bar, where Fairbairn certified his record. He took the title from Australians Harry Kooros and Jake Loiterton – kindly read my post "99 Pubs in 24 Hours to Break World Record" published December 06, 2023.

 

 

Liverpool are a pale shadow of themselves. Yesterday, in Italy, they had a job to do, to overcome the 3-goal deficit and progress to the next round in the Europa League. The fact is they are still the superior team and they've been known to stage stunning comebacks.

 

But it was not to be. The Reds' performance (or lack of it) in Bergamo was yet another alarming sign. They manage just one goal – a penalty in the 7th minute at that – and that means, they are out of Europe after a 3-1 aggregate defeat by Italian side Atalanta. 

 

Attention will now turn back to the title race with Liverpool sitting third behind second-placed Arsenal and two points off leaders Manchester City. 

 

The Premier League now represents their final chance at redemption and perhaps, give Jürgen Klopp (right) a nice chunk of glory to end his eight and a half years on Merseyside as well as add to their February success in the EFL Cup. 

 

According to Opta, Liverpool have a 12% chance of winning the league, while Gracenote's Euro Club Index ranks their chances at just 10%. 

 

The Reds travel to Fulham on Sunday before trips to Everton on April 24 and West Ham United on April 27. Three away games in the next nine days could well define how their campaign pans out from here.

 

I don't think Klopp has any clue on how to fix Liverpool. And his players appear to be giving up.

Joe Biden’s Approval Rating Plunges to All-time Low

Only three out of ten Americans believe that US President Joe Biden is paying adequate attention to the issues that concern them most, while a record low of 34% approves of his overall job performance, a new survey has revealed. 

 

The Monmouth University poll released on Monday showed that Biden’s approval rating has plunged ten percentage points in the past five months and is at its lowest level since he was sworn in as president. The percentage of US adults who disapprove of his performance has more than doubled since he took office in January 2021, to 61%.

 

And Vice President Kamala Harris has a similarly low approval rating, at 35%.

 

In fact, only one in five Americans believed the country was heading in the “right direction”, versus 69% who said it’s on the “wrong track”, the survey found. The portion of respondents saying the nation was going in the right direction has dropped eight percentage points in the past year.

 

I didn't know that M&M's candies are good candidates for Guinness World Records. 

 

[Check out "M&M Stack Breaks World Record With 7 M&M's®" published April 26, 2022].

 

A serial world record-breaker David Rush added another title to his name by sorting 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of Peanut M&M's by color in 1 minute and 14 seconds. 

 

Rush, who holds more than 250 Guinness World Records titles, took on the record for the fastest time to sort the multi-colored Peanut M&M's as part of an online challenge for Guinness World Records Day (i.e. November 16). 

99 Pubs in 24 Hours to Break World Record

An Australian duo broke a Guinness World Record by going on a pub crawl that took them to 99 different bars over the course of 24 hours. 

 

Harry Kooros and Jake Loiterton, both 26, had drinks at 99 Sydney bars over the course of the day to break the Guinness World Record for the most pubs visited in 24 hours. They took the title from South African man Heinrich de Villiers, who visited 78 pubs in 24 hours in September last year [Check out my post "So Soon – Another Record-Breaking Pub Crawl" published November 12, 2022].

 

The pair said they faced numerous challenges over the course of their pub crawl, including being turned away from some establishments that did not want them recording video inside and Kooros vomiting two hours into the attempt. 

 

"Luckily, after reassessing our game plan, I managed to pull it together and continue", Kooros told Guinness World Records. Actually, they had aimed for 100 pubs, but stopped at 99 due to a counting error. 

 

Kooros said the most difficult part of the attempt was consuming so many beverages. 

 

"While we initially planned to have an alcoholic drink at every second pub and having nonalcoholic drinks at alternating pubs, we quickly changed this plan. With Sydney's strict intoxication laws, we realized we needed to keep from being too inebriated so that we were let into all the pubs", he said. 

 

The record attempt raised money for multiple-sclerosis research charity MS Australia.

465 Couples Share Spaghetti Strands

Vapiano Germany gathered 465 couples to recapture a romantic Guinness World Record for the most people eating a single piece of spaghetti simultaneously. 

 

The German restaurant chain originally set the record in 2020 to commemorate their limited-edition dish of 60-cm long pieces of linguine called “Italian Kiss”. 

 

The fancy name aside, the expression “Italian Kiss” actually refers to when two people share a strand of pasta that ends with their lips touching, reminiscent of the 1955 Disney film “Lady and the Tramp” (right). 

 

Vapiano's record was later broken by the Belgium housing association Upgrade Estate with 433 couples, so Vapiano endeavored to take back its crown.

 

The record required each spaghetti strand consumption to end in a kiss, and the couples had to complete the process without breaking the spaghetti and within 30 seconds of starting.

 

The eatery gathered the massive group of couples at the Tempelhof airport hangar in Berlin on July 06, which is International Kissing Day. To create a romantic dining experience, the hangar was decorated to look like a restaurant, complete with tables draped with red tablecloths, which took 20 hours to complete. A mobile kitchen was brought in to make the copious amount of spaghetti.

 

The European chain restaurant franchise specialises in offering fresh, handmade pasta and pizza at their branches worldwide. 

 

Yesterday’s Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and Hibernian ended in a goalless stalemate. I’m sorry to say neither side were at their best in a pretty turgid game.

Pearly Tan Sets World Record for Fastest Smash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had previously featured Malaysia’s awesome badminton pair Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan in my blog. Two posts actually – May 28 and May 29, 2023. 

 

Yesterday, Badminton World Federation announced in their social media that Pearly Tan now holds the Guinness World Records for the fastest smash. She has carved her name in the record book for the Fastest Badminton Hit (female) category after clocking a speed of 438 kmph. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The amazing record was attempted at a gymnasium at Yonex Co Ltd Tokyo factory in Saitama, Japan on April 14 and was verified by the Guinness World Records judges. 

 

The 23-year-old Kedahan’s astonishing smash is faster than the speed of a Formula One (F1) car record (372.6 kmph). Try to imagine it! 

 

Yonex in their website, explained that the moment of impact in the actual smash was captured using a high-speed camera. “The instant velocity of the shuttlecock after the impact was then calculated from the photographic recording”, they stated. 

 

FYI, the Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan pair is currently ranked 11th in the world.

RIP MAD Cartoonist

Al Jaffee (right), the legendary cartoonist best known for being the longest-running contributor to the American humor magazine MAD, died yesterday. He had celebrated his 102nd birthday just last month.

 

Jaffee died in the hospital from multi-system organ failure, according to his granddaughter Fani Thompson, who confirmed the news to the New York Times and Washington Post. 

 

With a career that stretched from 1942 to 2020, Jaffee, who was born in Savannah in Georgia, USA and grew up in Lithuania before coming to New York, held the world record for “longest career as a comic artist”, a title awarded to him by Guinness World Records in 2016. 

 

During that time, he was instrumental in shaping the voice and sensibility of MAD, contributing to the magazine starting in 1955, just a few years after its launch. His biggest contribution to the magazine was the celebrated “FOLD-IN”, which first appeared in MAD in 1964 and remained a fixture until the magazine effectively folded in 2019. 

 

Mike Sacks, who interviewed Jaffee for his 2009 book "And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers", described the FOLD-INs as “deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous” and “a cache of subversive satire”. Methinks, they are brilliant!

 

I grew up on MAD. And Al Jaffee RIP was an integral part of MAD. Who didn't love his comedic and artistic innovation of his MAD FOLD-INs?

World’s Largest Book Published in Texas, USA

In the US, a Texas non-profit and the Bryan Museum in Galveston teamed up to break the Guinness World Record for largest published book with a tome measuring 7 feet tall and 11 feet wide and weighing in at 496 pounds. 

 

Literacy nonprofit iWRITE and The Bryan Museum in Galveston teamed up to create a massive version of the book "I Am Texas", which contains writing and artwork from 1,000 Texas students from third to 12th grades. 

 

Thankfully, the book has smaller versions available for purchase. 

 

Yesterday, in Malaysia, Gabungan Parti Sarawak candidate Anyi Ngau has been declared winner of the Baram parliamentary seat, where polling had been delayed because of bad weather. He secured 18,399 votes, defeating his closest rival Roland Engan of Pakatan Harapan by a 7,339 majority in a three-cornered contest. 

 

GPS have now won 23 seats out of 31 contested. The other Sarawak seats were won by DAP (5), and one each by Pakatan Harapan, Perikatan Nasional, and Parti Bangsa Malaysia. 

 

Only one parliamentary seat and one state seat remain in contention after the elections for both seats were postponed due to the deaths of election candidates. 

 

These are the Padang Serai parliamentary seat in Kedah and the Tioman state seat in Pahang. The election for both seats will be held on December 07 instead, while nomination day falls on November 24.

So Soon – Another Record-Breaking Pub Crawl

When my post “A Record-Breaking Pub Crawl” came out on September 20, I really thought the record would hold for some time – but I was wrong! 

 

Now, a South African living in Australia broke the Guinness World Record by taking an epic pub crawl to 78 different establishments in a 24-hour period. 

 

Heinrich de Villiers received word from Guinness World Records that his February 10-11 pub crawl across Melbourne with a support team consisting of brother Ruald de Villiers and friend Wessel Burger has been certified as the record for most pubs visited in 24 hours (individual).

 

De Villiers took the record from Englishman Nathan Crimp, who visited 67 pubs in the Brighton, England, area in a 24-hour period. 

 

"It is important to note that, as per the Guinness World Record rules, we only had to consume 125 milliliters [4.2 ounces] of any drink at each place we visited", de Villiers told Broadsheet.

 

Crazee-e-e!

 

The Sun Daily had reported yesterday that Bank Negara Malaysia governor Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus (right) said inflation is likely to remain elevated but Malaysia is not expecting a recession in 2023. 

 

She, in fact, added that the economy is projected to grow by 4.0 percent to 5.0 percent in 2023 and continues to surpass pre-pandemic levels.

 

I suppose this is good news.

A Record-Breaking Pub Crawl

On June 15, 2022, I had featured Gareth Murphy who broke the Guinness World Record by visiting 56 different pubs in a single 24-hour period and having at least one beverage at each. 

Nearly seven months afterward, 22-year-old Nathan Crimp took on the record for most pubs visited where he ended up going into 67 pubs in the Brighton, England, area in the space of seventeen hours. The recruitment account manager was joined by his two friends, Ollie and Archie, for the challenge – he started at 11 AM on Saturday and continued the pub crawl until 4 AM on Sunday morning. 

"It was easily the hardest thing I've ever done. I completely underestimated just how hard it was actually going to be", Crimp admitted to the Liverpool Echo. 

"The plan was to try and keep it sober for the first 25 pubs, but that went out the window 15 pubs in. I had to mix it up a little bit, I tried to drink alcohol in one and non-alcoholic drink in another – trying to space it out", he said. 

Guinness rules required Crimp to have a drink at each pub and collect evidence including receipts and witness signatures. 

"The hardest part was constantly having to go to the toilet, which took up the majority of the time", Crimp added.

Why am I not surprised? AirAsia received the most number of complaints against airlines in the country during the first half of the year, the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) revealed on Monday. 

The low-cost carrier accounted for 42.1 percent of all aviation-related complaints in the period, ahead of Malaysia Airlines (40.7 percent) and Batik Air (7.9 percent) according to Mavcom’s 12th issue of their bi-annual Consumer Report for 1H22. 

AirAsia suck big-time and Malaysia Airlines are not any better.