​Guinness World Records You Could Easily Beat

How cool would it be to become a world record holder? What an achievement to be the absolute, certified best at something, with your name written down in that collection of notables achievements. That's right, we're talking about the Guinness World Records. Just think of the bragging rights or the feeling of accomplishment that comes from knowing that however small, silly, or weird the record, you made an impact with your life.

Yes, all those things are on the "pro" side of setting a world record, which can easily dissipate into nothing when (or if) some other person comes along and does just a little better than you and snatches the record for their own. Well, good for them ... or good for you, because there are some world records that are essentially party tricks. In fact, you can get so good at these stunts with a little practice that the record can be yours. Here are some wacky Guinness world records that, with a little time and concerted efforts, could be beaten by a regular person.

On July 12, 2015, Silvio Sabba found a use for 247 of those old, thin, shiny holders of information and music rendered obsolete by the arrival of streaming. In Milan, Italy, Sabba balanced 247 compact discs atop a single finger. 

But if your plan to beat that record is to balance the CDs on an upward pointed finger, as if to try to spin a basketball, that's not quite what Sabba did. Nor did he wear the CDs on his index finger, ringing them around his digit as if it were a spindle. No, to beat Sabba, one must do exactly what Sabba did (but at least one disc better). You'll need to hold your finger straight out, parallel to the floor, and place those discs on top of each other, forming a tower of CDs not seen since 1999. 

The main preparations for trying to achieve this record? Working on balance, building up forearm strength (248 CDs weigh a lot), and finding that many compact discs in this day and age.

Most people only wear one T-shirt at a time, although every few years, it's fashionable to wear two at once, like a short-sleeve over a long-sleeve number. Any more than two, and it's silly — why more T-shirts and not, say, a sweater or a hooded sweatshirt? 

Of course, it's cold enough in some parts of Canada to warrant this kind of aggressive layering, and on February 17, 2019, in Kitchener, Ontario, Ted Hastings became the ultimate champion of wearing a whole bunch of clothes at the same time when he set a new world record, somehow donning 260 T-shirts all at the same time. In order to make it as smooth an endeavor as possible, Hastings had to put on increasingly larger sizes of shirt, starting with medium and going all the way up 20XL. Hastings hoped to tie his drive to set this record with his goal to raise money to build a school playground.

While this is probably harder than it looks, putting on a bunch of shirts isn't the most difficult task in the world. The hardest part is getting the shirts. Who has 261 shirts laying around anyway, and if they do, are they in increasingly larger sizes? A supply run to the Goodwill or Salvation Army store before the attempt may be in order.

At first glance, the record for the longest-lasting group hug seems like a snap — a warm, fuzzy, and loving snap. On May 4, 2019 (and into May 5, as well), four men from Ireland — Stephen Rattigan, Brian Cawley, Nick Kearney, and Robert Tuomey — all gathered in the Irish city of Castlebar to hug for quite a while. For exactly 30 hours and one minute, the group stayed locked in a full, fabulous foursome, enveloping each other with their arms, doing the thing to set a record that's often a thing that a person would do after they set any other record. 

Getting four people together to hug is a more enduring endeavor than just two, for which Guinness World Records lists a record of two college students embracing for more than 32 hours in 2015. Setting the new record for duo hugging is probably much easier, if only because it's logistically easier to get just one other person on board and over to the house to practice. But like any other act of physical endurance, long-term hugging has its own challenges that one has to get used to or eliminate before they become a problem. For example, arms get tired, and bad breath can make the whole thing miserable.

Ross McCurdy currently holds the record for cracking eggs — 32 in one minute. And on June 16, 2011, the Washington state native did all that with just one hand. Granted, he's got something of an unfair advantage over any potential competitors, past, present, and future, as he owns a diner specializing in breakfast — which means he's been working on his now world-class egg-cracking skills for years while on the job. Still, it's not an impossible record to beat. 

Of course, cracking even one egg is an annoying kitchen task. It has to get hit just right to break, and it has to break without spilling all over the place or leaving difficult-to-retrieve shell fragments in a pan or bowl. Per Guinness rules (of which McCurdy abided), no piece of eggshell can land in the bowls or cups used to collect the raw eggs. So if a person wants to make a metaphorical omelet, they're going to have to crack a few eggs — but literally. After all, many eggs will be required in order to figure out (and then repeat many times) the perfect way to open and empty them all in one movement.

A lot of entries in the Guinness World Records are oddly specific and a little weird. And while it's certainly very cool to be a record holder, it's not exactly a life skill or a resumé line item to be extremely fast and precise at placing sticky notes on one's body in a finite period of time. But then there's Terry Burrows, who could hold claim to the title of "best window cleaner in the world." 

At the National Window Cleaning Competition, which is a real thing that took place in Blackpool, England, on October 9, 2009, Burrows brought out the big equipment to clean some big windows in a small amount of time. Using an 11.75-inch-long squeegee and slightly more than two gallons of water, Burrows made three framed, standard office windows (45 by 45 inches) all shiny and clean in a mere 9.14 seconds.

To break Burrows record (which has understandably remained intact for more than a decade), it's probably best to start small. Use a small squeegee on a car window and then move up to a bigger squeegee and bigger glass surfaces, like shower doors and picture windows.

Let's be honest. If you're hanging around at home all night or all weekend, you're probably going to be aimlessly poking and pecking at some kind of electronic touchscreen device. So you might as well be doing something a bit more productive than Mario Kart Tour or composing dumb tweets. We're talking about something like setting a record and getting your name written down in a popular book for being the very best at aimlessly poking and pecking at some kind of electronic touchscreen device. 

That's exactly what Chase Samuel did, anyway. On August 12, 2013, in Osler, Saskatchewan, he set a new benchmark in typing the whole of the alphabet into an iPad (in correct order and with no mistakes, of course) in a mere 2.47 seconds. Even more impressive (and challenging), Samuel did it with just one hand. The only real way to prepare for this is to practice by typing the entire alphabet on an iPad and getting a rhythm down so well that entering the ABCs becomes an act of muscle memory. Some finger dexterity exercises might be a good idea, too.

Not all doughnuts are created equal. Glazed doughnuts are fluffy and airy, while apple fritters are thick and packed with fruit chunks. Jelly doughnuts — known as jam doughnuts in some parts of the world — are a happy medium in terms of weight and density, making them a good candidate to test the prowess of champion eaters of fried sweet pastries. In April 2014, Philip Santoro of San Francisco choked down an entire, standard-sized jam-filled doughnut in just 11.41 seconds. And as a bonus, he didn't once lick his lips once during his run at the record books, and he didn't even use his hands.

If you try to go for the new world record of doughnut wolfing, the best (and probably only) way to train is to eat as many doughnuts as possible, without vomiting and while wearing comfortable, elastic-outfitted sweatpants. It's probably also a good idea to let a doctor know what you're going to do. They won't like it, but they should at least be aware.

It may seem like the record set by Patrick Bertoletti in Dundee, Illinois, on January 14, 2012, is a little too easy. Eight isn't ever much of anything, but it is when it comes to handling bananas. In one minute, Bertoletti managed to peel eight entire bananas and then eat the tangy fruit inside. Honestly, one forgets that bananas are kind of tough to get open. Plus, they're pretty large, so a single banana is quite a lot to eat, let alone stuff in one's mouth all at once (and in a finite period of time, too). 

Bertoletti obviously developed a technique for getting them open and ready so quickly, which is what a training regimen to break the guy's record would entail, because eight isn't enough bananas to break the record. You gotta go for at least nine inside of 60 seconds. At any rate, even if you try to become the official Guinness champion of banana peeling-and-eating, you'll at least get plenty of dietary potassium.

A "marathon" is a footrace of 26.2 miles. A "television marathon" is watching a lot of television. These two things aren't really comparable, but just because watching TV is something one does while sitting down comfortably on a couch with the warming glow of a high-definition screen lighting the way, it doesn't mean it's not a physically taxing ordeal that can test every system of the body. 

Any attempt to become the person who watched the most television all at once without stopping (and on purpose, not because they lost track of time binging episodes of an entire HBO series all at once) involves not falling asleep, having plans in place for regular food and beverage arrivals, and a means of bodily function relief. It's harder than it seems, so it's quite the achievement that Alejandro "AJ" Fragoso watched 94 straight hours of television in New York City during April 2016. It was for a publicity event for video optimization software, and we're pretty sure his eyes were toast after it was all finished.

Playing video games for an indefinite and long period of time is a common, leisurely pursuit of the humble homebody. Well, that's how some view it anyway. In reality, playing video games can be incredibly intense, and in fact, there are few world records related to playing these games.

But getting a high score takes a lot of hard work, skill, practice, and luck, and who has the time to get all those things sorted out? So Guinness lists achievers who simply played a particular video game for an eye-burning, thumb-spraining period of epic proportions. Eric Furrer shows up in the Guinness World Records for such an accomplishment. From August 29, 1980 to September 2, 1980, 12-year-old Furrer played the then-popular game Space Invaders for 38 hours and 30 minutes.

Furrer has held his record for so long that it's probably high time that he was dethroned. All it takes to make an attempt at 38 hours and 31 minutes is a comfy couch, some kind of gaming console outfitted with retro games, and a lot of free time.

Assembling a Mr. Potato Head as fast as you can? Well, that's a great world record to attempt because it's a matter of combining practice (and a lot of it) with objects a person is very likely to have around the house. After all, plenty of people have an old Mr. Potato Head and a bucket of parts on a shelf or in storage somewhere, be it a vintage one or a Toy Story tie-in version. And then it's just a matter of figuring out the quickest and most time-efficient order for getting those plastic facial features onto that oblong, plastic man. 

Is it eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and then hat? Or does hat, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears work best? It probably depends on the person, and every time they try it, they'll likely shave off a fraction of a second. Before long, they'll be putting their manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination to the test and challenging official Guinness big shots like Samet Durmaz. At a Guinness sponsored event in Istanbul, Turkey, on February 21, 2010, he put together a Mr. Potato Head toy in a blistering 6.62 seconds.

Millions of homes in Europe and North America celebrate the tradition of the advent calendar. A fun way for holiday-loving kids and adults to count down the days to Christmas, store-bought advent calendars usually boast about 25 little cardboard flaps, with one to be opened each day of December until Christmas. Behind each tiny door, there's a little morsel of chocolate. It's customary to eat just one piece of chocolate for the assigned day, but it's about as hard to wait for chocolate as it is for the morning after Santa visits. Thus, there's a Guinness-certified record for ripping apart a commercial advent calendar to gain access to — and wildly consume — all of the chocolate inside.

Competitive eater and YouTube personality "L.A. Beast" (real name Kevin Strahle) did it better and faster than anyone, devouring all the chocolate in an advent calendar in one minute and 27.84 seconds at Guinness' New York offices in December 2017. This record is bound to fall. After all, it's eating a couple of handfuls of small candies in a little over a minute. And practice makes perfect. Just grab a bag of candy and learn to unwrap and throw them in your mouth as quickly as possible.

Some world records take years of conditioning or practice. Others test the limits of human endurance. And then there are some achievements listed in the record books that just involve sitting there or even lying there. Break one of those, and your name is in print as a world record holder. There has to be a catch, of course, and the catch for this relatively and technically easy record is that it consists primarily of sitting in a bathtub for 100 hours. But don't worry about the water getting cold because there's no water — only baked beans. (And they're also cold.)

In 1986, Barry Kirk — a man from England who loves baked beans so much that he also poses as a superhero named "Captain Beany" and started his own ridiculously awesome museum — set a record which still hasn't been bested. He sat in a hotel room bathtub full of cold canned beans for 100 hours. That's four days and four hours. So yeah, if you've got a bunch of beans (and time) to spare, maybe you can defeat Captain Beany.