Seventy-one surfers at Muizenberg could well have cruised their way into the record books by riding a single wave at the same time, smashing last year's world record of 44 - a figure most of them helped thrash five times on Sunday.
More than 1 500 people gathered on the beach to enjoy the spectacle of 320 surfers trying to share a wave in the Earthwave Global Surf Challenge, one of seven events happening worldwide to raise awareness about global warming.
An ecstatic Dene Botha, owner of the Kahuna Surfing Academy which masterminded the global challenge and organised the South African leg, said it was "explosive" when the local surfers managed to break the record "five spectacular times over".
Stone me! It's a new pebble record Monday, October 1, 2007
Stone me! A man has manged to 'skim' a stone across water 51 times, shattering the old world record of 40. Russell Byars' managed to get the pebble to travel 250 feet (76 meters). Before declaring him a record holder, Guinness World Records experts analyzed film of Byars' toss, checking the concentric circles in the water by each skip.
"I actually threw 40 stones that day, but that was the first skip that I threw," Byars told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper, which confirmed the record with Guinness officials. The old record was set in 2002.
Germany's leaning tower knocks famed Pisa out of the record books 5th November 2007
A German church steeple has knocked the leaning tower of Pisa from the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most lopsided building. The tilting tower in the German village of Suurhusen applied in June for the title and has now officially beaten the famous landmark in Pisa. Guinness Book of Records confirmed the award after officials measured it leaning at a 5.19 degree angle compared to only 3.97 degree angle at which the tower of Pisa leans. Olaf Kuchenbecker of the Guinness World Records office in Hamburg said: "It is a world record."
The church was built in middle of the 13th century but a 90ft tower was added in 1450. The tower was built on wooden foundations and the combination of the oak wood foundations and wet soil has caused the tower to slowly lean to one side over the years. Several attempts to stop the tower from leaning any further have been made since 1982, and it was eventually stabilised in 1996. The church is still in use and also offers guided tours but church officials are appealing for donations to help maintain the building.
Another day, another bizarre world record for Jackie Bibby, the 'Texas Snake Man.' Bibby spent about 45 minutes in a see-through bathtub with 87 rattlesnakes on Monday, fully clothed, shattering his own record by 12 snakes just in time for Guinness World Records Day, which is on Thursday. A Guinness official certified the record, in Dublin, Texas.
The snakes crawled under his arms, between his legs and anywhere else they could slither, Bibby said. None bit him. 'They can go wherever they want as long as they don't start biting,' Bibby said. 'The key to not biting is for me to stay still. Rapid movement scares a rattlesnake. If you move real slow and gentle, that doesn't seem to bother them.'
Bibby sat in the dry bath with a pillow behind him, wearing regular clothing. The snakes were not defanged and still contained their venom, he said. The clear bathtub was specially made several years ago for Bibby by the Guinness people for a televised segment. He has used it for subsequent attempts at the record for sitting in a tub with snakes. 'I have set several world records in that bathtub,' Bibby said.
Last year he set a Guinness-certified record by holding 10 rattlesnakes by their tails in his mouth at once. He said he hopes to break that record on Tuesday by squeezing in an 11th.
One of Britain's strongest men has failed in a bid to break a world record by pulling a double-decker bus using his ears in London's Hyde Park. Manjit Singh hoped to pull the 7.5-tonne Routemaster at least 10 metres (33ft) to kick off the third annual Guinness World Records Day, but only succeeded in moving the vehicle part of the way.
'Unfortunately Manjit was not able to move the bus far enough on this occasion,' Guinness World Records spokeswoman Amarilla Espinoza said. 'He only managed to pull it around five metres (16ft). He's very disappointed, but that's the nature of record-breaking.'
Earlier this year, Mr Singh, from Leicester, succeeded in pulling a passenger aircraft weighing 7.4 tonnes a distance of 3.4 metres (11ft) using his ears. He already holds several other records, including one for pulling a double-decker bus with his hair, and another for lifting 85kg (187lb) with his ears.
Don't sneeze! Man builds record-breaking 25ft house of cards By CLAIRE BATES
7th December 2007
Bryan Berg has a surprising gravity-defying hobby. The 33-year-old American builds huge structures out of playing cards and his latest 25ft skyscraper has broken all records. The professional 'cardstacker' has created a variety of breathtaking sculptures over the years including models of cathedrals, skyscrapers and stadiums, without using anything to stick them together.
Berg said the combined weight of the cards and his special grid structures helped hold his constructions in place. His latest creation, which took five weeks to build, stands at 25ft 9inches tall and was made from 1,800 decks of playing cards. It was limited only by the height of the building he was working in. While Berg's remarkable feats may take unyielding concentration and patience he insists his work is highly rewarding.
"I like what I do. This is no kind of torture or boredom for me," he said. "In my lifetime, cardstacking has gone from a hobby to an obsession to a livelihood."
Berg first started building card houses at the age of eight. He broke the Guinness World Record for the World's Tallest House of Cards in 1992 at the age of seventeen, with a tower fourteen feet, six inches tall. When asked recently if he could build a taller structure, perhaps even 100ft high, he was undaunted. "You bet!" he said.
Foster's design for world's biggest building given go-ahead by Moscow planners 3rd January 2008
Norman Foster's gigantic circus tent-shaped building will contain 27 million sqft of floorspace - unrivalled by any other structure on the planet. It is set to tower nearly 1,500ft into the air - becoming one of the world's tallest buildings - and house up to 30,000 residents.
It will dwarf Foster's recent UK projects, including the 590ft-tall "Gherkin" in the City of London and the new Wembley stadium, and the architect described the project as a career "milestone." Located on the Nagatino Peninsula in Moscow, less than five miles from the Kremlin, Crystal Island will contain a variety of mixed-use buildings including 3,000 hotel rooms and 900 serviced apartments.
There will be everything from an international school for 500 pupils, offices and shops to museums, theatres and cinemas under its enormous fanned roof.
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