FREAK TITLES

Evening Star, Issue 20309, 18 October 1929, Page 2

FREAK TITLES

NEW BIDS AND CLAIMS HUSBAND CALLING ASTOUNDING AND CURIOUS CONTESTS. America is the happy hunting ground for freak stunts, and summer has brought tho annual entrants for freak championships, states a writer in a recent issue of a New "York contemporarv. Recently Bill Williams, a Rio Hondo (Texas), pasterer, completed his stunt, occupying almost a montn, of pushing a peanut with his nose along a twenty-two-raile route leading to the summit of Pike’s Peak. Xjast year ho pushed the peanut along eleven miles of macadam near Rio Hondo. He liked the taste of fame, and proceeded on the likes leak route this summer. Ho contrived a device, attachable to his nose, for protecting its epidermis. He wore knee pads. He succeeded in his purpose of getting into the public prints. CONTEST OPEN FOR WIVES.

Tn Ponca Citv, Oklahoma, Mayor Will A. Brooks has issued a call lor rolling-pin throwers in a contest to be held this summer to determine which wife in the community is most proficient in that respect. • 1 In Paris, a New Yorker, Dr Robert E. Moore, has gone into training tor the 7,000 golf shots he estimates he will require over a ctpurse to Berlin. Tho distance is 674 miles as the crow flics. But there is a mater of . hazards in the form of mountains, rivers, woods, and buildings that will extend the course considerably. Tho marathon dance has lost its appeal. It has been overdone. Also the “ dance ” is no more than a shufilo and holds no thrill for the spectator. And the gabfest is out. Its aspirants in last year’s contests passed, so much time and vocal effort bickering in rest periods that they talked themselves out of achieving any record of note. Thus, the dubious glory of being the world’s most continuous talker remains with Parlatus, Berlin actor, who talked for forty-five hours before he ran short of words.

CHAMPION COFFEE DRINKER. Albert Banker, of New York, finds life pleasant because none has outdone his feat of drinking 250 cups of coffee in four hours. Nor is his delight with himself any more enthusiastic than that of Harry O’Brien, of Patersbn, who ran away with the peanut-rolling championship by urging them with a stick along a mile of streets. The annual fair at Grinnel, lowa, hold no event so alluring as the hus-band-calling contest. The title at the moment belongs to Mrs A. M. Dempster. Eleven wives last year participated, yodehng, yoohooxng, barking, stamping, and clapping their hands. Off in a far section of the lot the husbands waited. One woman impatiently shrieked, “ Hey, you c’mon over here!” There was no response. But Mrs Dempster neither shrieked nor whistled. She merely cupped her hands and trilled beautifully like a mocking bird. Her own husband did not answer, but nineteen husbands in the grand stand leaped from their seats and the judges felt they could do nothing other than call her the winner. Joseph de Virgilio, < of Cambridge, Mass., is a neighbourhood hero. lie has something to leave to posterity. On August 31, 1927, he walked on stilts the forty-two miles from Boston to Providence. His legs were swollen, but the stilts suffered far more. Disregarding union restrictions, Jim Brown, of Kansas City, laid 36,001) paving blocks in a day —a freight car holds 25,000. That energised “ Slim ' Peterson, of Arkansas City, Kan., into action, and he ran up a total of 50,000 while the cinema cameras took his picture. Tong Glassoo bi’oke both their hearts and their records by laying 69,000 blocks. If you are bothered with a servant problem get in touch with Stella Huoff, of Cross Keys, N.J. In one hour and fifteen minutes she washed and hung 135 pieces of laundry. Women who are reluctant to push baby carnages may be reminded of Mrs Lillian Groom, a sturdy matron of London, England, who trundled a perambulator to Brighton, fifty-two miles away, in twelve hours and twenty minutes, in April, 1923. OTHER QUEER CHAMPIONSHIPS. Arthur Allegrctti’s idea of showing of! was to roller skate from Buffalo to New York in August, 1927, in fiftyeight hours. Ho “dined ’ on soda water and used up three pairs of roller skates and six bottles of oil. Arthur Holfman shackled himself to the steering wheel of his car in New York on December 21, 1927, and did not quit until he had driven 100 hours. Two youths in 1912 started walking backward from Salem, N.C., to New York. There is no record of how they wound up, whether they achieved their goal or backed into the Atlantic. P. B. M'Cartney claims the street car transfer championship of the world. This Rochester gentleman has collected more than 10,000 transfers, and boasts he can accommodate you for any street railway in the world. J. H. Oyler played a course thirtyfive miles long, taking 1,087 strokes between the Maidstone links and the Littlestone greens in England. He lost seventeen balls in two and a-half days. Squcek Schrantz, of the St. Paul A.C., claims to be the all-wet champion having bobbed in the water 1,843 times in one hour, on March 24, 1928. T, M. Jones, of London, avers he_ is something of an all-wet champion himself. having imbibed sixty-seven steins of beer for breakfast. The Miss America crown is no incentive to Ina Leslie, seventeen years old, of Los Angeles. She finds her happiness in her record for milking cows at the annual fair. In September, 1926, Bud Reynolds, qf Columbia, Ohio, played the piano for 105 hours. He fainted half way along, but was revived and continued. When he finished his fingers were in handages. At Aldershot, England, in 1913, Tom Burrows swung a pair of Indian clubs 104 hours—and became insane. George Smith, of Utica, raised himself on his toes 20,000 times. Mrs Nerr Peese, fifty years old, of Middlebnrg, Pa., on November 22, 1918. rolled a barrel for eight miles. Mine Verdier, in Paris, made 2,000 sandwiches in nine hours. The Spirit of Franklin, a kite crewed by St. Paul youths—‘Paul Berg and Isidore Legan—tallied 2,856 whirls, _ loops, and swerves. Sylvia Moskowitz, twelve years old, of the same city, bounced a golf ball 2,710 times, and thus attained the public notice. Alvin Bunde and Theodore Syvertsen, also of St. Paul, essayed a staying-awake contest. Syversten’s eyes closed after seventy-two hours. GASTRONOMIC FEATS. For all-round gastronomic feats the crown ought to set safely on Sallie Rope’s brow. Or it would have, had she not succumbed after her arduous championship enterprise. Sallie was a dusky |ass of Kansas City, Mo., who,

in 1910, had heard of the alimentary capacities of ostriches and goats, and announced she could pack in far more hardware than au ostrich or a goat. When the autopsy was performed the medical examiner listed 1,551 items, including 453 nails, 42 screws, 9 bolts, 5 spoons, a nail filCj 5 thimbles, 03 buttons, 105 safety pins, 115 hairpins, 138 common pins, 52 carpet tacks, 57 needles, 85 pebbles, and a 4ft string of beads. The East Side still recalls the “hotdog ” contest in a Second Avenue saloon on November 29, 1923, when Val Menges swooned after the . forty-fourth Frankfurter, and John Hinsin, uncoiling a new supply, nibbled away placidly to his fifty-third before calling it a meal. John Dammau, at Red Wing, Minn., on December 14, 1927, won the soupsipping title by splashing through three and a-half quarts. Two competitors were disqualified. In 1814 two Britons set out to determine whether the water drinker or wine sipper was the more enduring. The water man almost drowned. The wine drinker won. But he didn’t know it until two days later. Martin M'Kce, of Springfield, 111., a miner, ate twenty-fivo large pickles before quitting with the complaint that he was choking on the warts. Being somewhat voracious, John Samuel Francis Dalton, of New Orleans, consumed the following menu on January 7, 1927:—Twelve dozen eggs, 8 oysters, 3J cups of coffee, quarts of wine, 1 box or crackers, 2 slices of jelly cake, 1 bottle of sauce, 3 bananas, 4 onions, and 6 green poppers, and exclaimed: “I’ll try it again to-morrow; I haven’t much appetite to-day!” But next day they were placing ico on his head. PLENTY OF PIE EATERS. The woods are full of pie eaters, oyster consumers, and others, who, in their quest of fame, delight to caress their palates with extraordinary qnantities of edibles. C. S. Carter, of Groton, S.D., on December 6, 1925, developed a new field of competition by eating fifty-one flapjacks. Though a rival, W. P. G. Meyers, ate eight loss the next day, Meyers was .hailed as the champion because his flamacks had 2m more diameter. Dan Henderson, of Jonesboro, Ga., on November 24, 1923. completed sixtynine hours of steady chewing on a quid of tobacco. For twenty-iiino years Alma Boggs, of Shrewsbury, England, has partaken' ardently of one and a-half pints of vinegar a day. Lily Marshall, of Cpnnellsville, Pa., has attended . Sunday school more than 800 consecutive Sundays. On the other hand, Louise Moody, of Goshen, N.Y.. says' she has been a church member thirty-five years and has never been at church service. Fred M'Clane. of Enid. Okla.. has attended more than 5.000 funerals.