PICTURESQUE RECORDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16738, 20 May 1922, Page 4

PICTURESQUE RECORDS.

CCINC ONE BETTER. i The other day gieat admiration was expressed in Franco for a diver who established a record by staying three minutes and a half under water (says the “New York Tribune”) This was performed in a glass aquarium. It is a great cause of pride to be the only one in the world able to do something which no one before had been audacious. patient or mean enough to do. And there are curious records. In Paris, in 3 809. the famous Danes Baptiste and Francois competed in a race on the Place de l'Opera, with this slight peculiarity, that both of them “walked on their heads.” Shiers went from Manchester to I.ondon. rolling under his skilled feet a hall weighing forty kilos, and. in 1904. Williams astounded the same city bv driving a four-horse team with liis toes. The musical competition of whipcracking. which took place in Longyumenu. is still remembered. The winner performed the Marseilles without a false note. At Gourdon. in 1897, assembled the nut crackers. The winner cracked 2786 nuts in ore hour. The championship of money counters i 6 still an English institution. The feat consists ir, counting 12-50 francs and distributing them in bags, each to contain 125 francs. The sum is, of course, in all sorts of small coins. The record was established in nine minutes. Smokers, have had numerous competitions. The American Dee smoked fifty cigars consecutively. without drinking or “ spitting” In Brussels in 1905 a competition for slowness among the smokers was held. The winner caused his cijjar to hold out for more than two hours. It is known how men repi’oaeh women for lingering in the stores in shopping. An English woman wanted to give the lie io the masculine calumny. She wagered that she would buy n wash tub and get a receipt in proof in every department store of I-ondon and return home in the space of one and one-half hour. She won the wager. The record of rope-skipping does not belong to a girl, but to a man. who made 2044 skips in thirteen minutes. Allan Biggin is in the world waltz championship. He waltzed in New York for 2-5 hours 33 minutes 10 seconds before a jury. He had wagered to tire out the pianist. But the latter held out. It is true that the Italian Knncia did even better : for forty hours he played on the piano 250 compositions. with but two rests of ten minuted. But no sport has counted more championships than eating. A few years ago all New York was interested in the competition of beefsteak eaters. Patrick Davis in one single repast devoured seven kilogrammes of beef, but hia chief rival. Charles Obrax. beaten in quantity, surpassed him in rapidity —in three minutes, three kilos. Frederick Maokay, of Kansas, swallowed 300 oysters' in fifteen minutes. Sam Stiff Hu, of New Jersey, swallowed thirty mouthfuls in 180 seconds. "VI il liamsburg, of Rotterdam, ate fifty softboiled eggs in an hour. The true glory is not to have been able to do something formidable, but to have done what others had never done.