Birmingham is justifiably regarded as being one of the Great British cities. Apart from being the UK’s fourth most visited city, it boasts a couple of the country’s oldest football clubs and the ‘city of a thousand trades’ has seen the launch of any number of brands over the years. Birmingham has also played host to some of the most absurd world-record breaking feats ever accomplished. There is a lot of competition to make this list, but we have narrowed it down to the top ten silliest world-records to have been broken in Birmingham.
You may need to be a EuroMillions winner to attempt this one at home. The record for the most TVs thrown out of a window in three minutes was set by members of the Kerrang! Radio team in Birmingham back in 2007. In case you’re counting at home they managed to launch 61 tellies out of the third-floor window of an abandoned building.
Just about everybody has tried a game of Tetris at some stage or another. But nobody has managed to play a bigger version of the game than the 105.79 m² game played by presents of The Gadget Show in Birmingham in 2010.
Pensioner Carol Vaughan from Sutton Coldfield has cleaned up on one particular Guinness World Record, that for collecting the most soap. In total, she has accumulated over 5,000 bars of soap from all over the world, although her favourite is the Santa Claus soap that she picked up in a local shop in Birmingham.
If you ever want to try and put out a blaze in an extremely inefficient manner, then you may want to get in touch with the team at WaterAid. They set the world record for the fastest time to move 10 litres of water by only using cups, taking 16 minutes 32 seconds to do so. In fairness, this was a stunt to promote awareness of the fantastic work that this group does in trying to provide access to water, toilets and hygiene to people all over the globe.
We are constantly being told that we need to get up and do more exercise, and if you don’t fancy running you may prefer to follow the example set by David Turner and Katie Walter. They set the record for the furthest distance danced by a couple, making it just over 8km on the Hadley Stadium Athletics Track. If you want to try for yourself, they used a combination of different ballroom dances to complete their unique journey.
Sometimes it feels like the Guinness World Record guys need to tighten up a few of the entry qualifications. For example, does their really need to be a record for building the largest LEGO® moa in the world? Well, there is, and the 1.47m tall bird was built by the guys at Bright Bricks in Birmingham in 2015.
How much would you pay for a hot cross bun? They are tasty, but I’m guessing that £155 would be a little over your budget. This was the amount paid for a bun baked in 1829 when it came to auction at the NEC in Birmingham at the Antiques for Everyone show. Probably best not to try snacking on this bun with a cuppa though, as it was designed to hang on the wall to ward off evil spirits, and 190 years is a little past its expiry date.
Ever tried to make five balloon sculptures while blindfolded? No, of course not, why would you? Anyway, Ryan Tracey managed to achieve this feat in 1 minute 1.3 seconds on the Birmingham round of Britain’s Got Talent. Huzzah!
We haven’t included any sports records in this list, so let’s make amends with our final record-breaker. Steven Bazell ran the BUPA Great Birmingham Run in 2014, setting a very respectable half-marathon time of 1 hour 20 minutes. However, this one gets into the Guinness Record Books due to the fact that he achieved this feat while dressed as a (female) nurse. He did raise £2,800 for charity though, so good on you Steve!