6 WTF World Records Held By Celebrities
by Ian Fortey
The life of a celebrity is pretty awesome. You get to be on TV, you get to have fans, you get to ride ostriches, probably ... you get to break world records in totally unrelated fields all the time. Oh, wait, you didn't know about that last part? Yeah, that totally happens all the time. For instance ...
The Green Power Ranger Has A World Record For Breaking Boards While Skydiving
No show more perfectly represented childhood than the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Every day for them is a choreographed slap fight against men in leotards, before a big rubbery robot man fights a big, rubbery something-else man and sometimes a woman. That really is the Generation Z experience, or whatever generation we're on now. Do we start at A again?
Of all the Power Rangers, none were cooler than the Green Ranger, because his greenness was rare and not a part of the main cast. As you no doubt suspected, all that awesomeness wasn't just Hollywood dime-store magic. The man behind the Zord, Jason David Frank, is more Ranger than man at this point. He's so intense, he holds the world record for most pine boards broken by a single man. Cool, huh? Oh, wait, I read that wrong. He holds the record for the most pine boards broken while skydiving.
Lionsgate
He wasn't even going for a record. He was just going to do that anyway.
The record for busting pine boards in the middle of a death plummet is seven. If that seems low, at least consider the speed bumps on the road to board-breaking that skydiving presents. For instance, who's holding those boards, and how do you ensure they don't float away? If the person holding the boards loses their grip, will the board fly up at high velocity and break your face off? What do you hold loose boards in while tumbling from a plane, some kind of satchel or fanny pack? How many birds die from the splinters? There are a lot of logistics to consider.
The record was broken in 2017, destroying the old record of a paltry two boards. Two. Ha! That's weak Red Ranger stuff right there.
Snoop Dogg Helped Make The World's Largest Paradise Cocktail
If '90s rap taught us nothing else, it's that there were certain tool-based MCs you can't touch and that Snoop Dogg was a man with a specific love of beverages. In 1993, he explained fairly succinctly that he spent a good deal of his downtime sipping on gin and juice. He was laid back as he did so. He also pondered his finances during this time. Did things eventually change for Snoop? Nah, they only got bigger, which is why he helped make a world record Paradise Cocktail.
A Paradise Cocktail is gin, apricot brandy and orange juice, and it's either as delicious or as disgusting as it sounds, depending on your taste preferences. The one Snoop helped mix up was made with 315 liters of gin, 156 liters of brandy and 106 liters of orange juice. Even the legendary Andre the Giant would have gotten a buzz off of that.
Guinness World Records
He holds the record for the biggest joint, too, but that one is totally incidental.
Snoop shares the honor with Warren G and chef Michael Voltaggio, who made the giant drink onstage at a concert, because that's how some concerts roll these days. If you're wondering what Snoop's contribution was to this whole endeavor, beyond a loosely related song recorded 25 years earlier, he garnished the drink. A whole melon impaled on a plastic sword, just dropped right in next to the pink umbrella. Imagine the fruit flies that died in that thing.
Concert-goers got to enjoy watching the drink being made and then served to VIPs, giving them a real-world Food Network experience of seeing but never tasting things professional chefs and/or rappers make.
Idris Elba Holds A Land Speed Record In A Bentley
Idris Elba is immensely popular for his skill at robot-fighting giant, sea-based monsters and also for Heimdalling Thor around the Marvel Universe until Thanos showed up and Thanos'd him. In his personal life, he does a lot more than that including DJing and, of course, shattering land speed records in fancy British motorcars. That's how fancy they are: they're called motorcars.
The record was broken in 2015, replacing the previous record set 88 years before, when presumably land speed was first invented by Baron Landon von Speedler. Elba's record was part of a show he was filming called Idris Elba: No Limits which is about all the limits Elba refuses to have. Most of those limits are related to speed, since it's just a show about him being super fast in cars and sometimes not in cars. It's the Idris Elba way.
The Verge
We're assuming a rainbow bridge shot out from the rear of the car as he did it.
How fast is Idris Elba in a Bentley? He hit 180.361 miles per hour. That's really fast for a car that seems a lot like the Mr. Burns of fancy cars and doesn't necessarily make you think of speed. Which isn't to say they don't make fast cars, it's just that they all cost around $200,000 or more so most of us have never actually been in one to know.
Jason Ritter Holds A Record For Hugging People
Jason Ritter is the son of the extremely awesome John Ritter. Like his dad, he's taken a shine to acting and has made his mark in shows like Joan of Arcadia, Gravity Falls and Parenthood, which netted him an Emmy nomination. He's also a man who likes a good hug, because who doesn't?
In terms of this World Record-setting day, Ritter was a guest on The View, where he set about breaking the record for most hugs given by an individual in one minute. Is that a weird record to go for on a TV show? Yes, but it was either that or trying to break eight pine boards while skydiving. He clearly made the right choice.
If you're curious, the standing record for hugs had been 79 in a single minute, which seems like maybe too many hugs already. Ritter managed to rack up 86. A record probably none of us realized even existed until just now.
The Rock Broke 3 World Records (One Is For The Largest seven-Layer Dip)
After Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson achieved the pinnacle of his career by lending his face to the Scorpion King in one of those Mummy sequels, it seems like he had nowhere to go but down. But as we've come to learn, The Rock never stops being awesome, so after being a terrible computer effect in a movie, he did the next most awesome thing a person can do: he made the world's largest seven-layer dip. Like a boss. Sort of.
The Rock officially has his name on this record, despite the fact that if you watch the actual video of the creation of it (a 540 lb monstrosity that was born in a fish tank consisting of refried beans, sour cream, cheese, guacamole, tomatoes, onions and olives) there's not a Rock to be seen. Instead, it's guys from his production company that he told to make it. But it's still his record. Because who is going to tell The Rock he didn't break a record? He could literally fold you in half like a pair of pants.
This is actually the Rock's 3rd world record. He had previously snagged one for most selfies in three minutes, as well as having the highest annual earnings for an actor in the current year. Both of those records were stolen away from him by Wahlbergs, oddly enough. The first by Donnie and the second by Mark. So that's weird.
In case you were worried, the tank of dip wasn't wasted, it was actually donated to a mission so some hungry people actually got to enjoy something fun and tasty for an afternoon, which is a cool thing to do. That Rock fella is going places.
David Hasselhoff Has A "Reverse Bungee" World Record
This is a hard entry to write because the name "David Hasselhoff" seems like it's already a punchline these days, and that's not fair. Hasselhoff had a talking car in the 1980s. A talking car that helped him solve crimes. The 80s were weird. Later he spent 100 summers, running in slow motion next to lifeguards, and there aren't a lot of better legacies to have then that, if you ignore everything else he's done. Except one thing. Don't ignore that David Hasselhoff, at age 59, achieved a world record for the highest reverse bungee jump.
If you're not aware, a reverse bungee jump is when they tie the rope to your face and push you off a bridge. Wait, no, that's different. A reverse bungee jump is when you start from the bottom, get hooked into a line that's pulled taut by a crane or a giant, if you have one, and then get launched like some kind of meat catapult into the air for the amusement of those on the ground. Hasselhoff did that in 2011 and achieved a height of 229 feet and 7 inches.
Syco Entertainment
He's the one crapping his pants.
Now you might be wondering two things: First, why not call it an "Eegnub Jump"? Because thats silly. Second, why does David Hasselhoff have this record? Because Simon Cowell wanted to launch him into the air on a TV show. This is the reason behind much of what happens in Britain, incidentally.
