Scatter Brained

SPITTING WATERMELON SEEDS
The Record:
 spitting a watermelon seed 66 feet, 11 inches
The Record Holder:
 Jack Die—wait, what’s that you say? 
Spitting watermelon seeds isn’t a 
sport
? Well, sure, but neither 
is badminton—and you weren’t complaining a minute ago. 
But okay. Fine. If watermelon seed spitting isn’t a sport . . .
C H A P T E R   5

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130
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
09
 
Really
 Unbreakable Records: 
Th
  e Nonsports Edition
. . . then we’ll just mention it here:
The Record:
 spitting a watermelon seed 66 feet, 11 inches
The Record Holder:
 Jack Dietz of Chicago
Why It’s Unbreakable:
 Watermelon seeds ain’t what they 
used to be. Genetic engineering has begun to take a toll on the 
quality of watermelon seed spits. Because seedless watermel-
ons have crossbred with seeded ones, watermelon seeds “just 
don’t have the mass” they used to, to quote Mr. Dietz himself. 
A lighter, smaller seed means more wind resistance, making 
Dietz’s record safe to history.
✖  ✖  ✖
The Record:
 eating 1,000 oysters in a single day (according to 
Roman historians)
The Record Holder:
 Vitellius, 
who was Emperor of Rome for 
all of about three weeks
It’s Unbreakable Because:
 
Have you seen what they’re 
charging for oysters these 
days? Only a Roman emperor 
could aff ord 1,000 oysters, 
let alone eat them.
✖  ✖  ✖
The Record:
 Eating a bicycle. 18 bicycles, actually. Also a cash 
register, a coffi
  n, 15 shopping carts, and an entire airplane
It’s interesting to note that while Vi-
tellius constantly indulged his own 
gluttony, he purportedly starved 
his mother to death to fulfi ll a (man-
ifestly false) prophecy that his reign 
would  only  be  long  if  he  outlived 
his parents.

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131
The Record Holder:
 Michel Lotito, who has eaten about two 
pounds of ground-up metal every day since 1959
It’s Unbreakable Because:
 Well, fi rst, because 
Guinness World 
Records
 won’t allow any challengers, due to health risks. And 
second, because—um, are 
you
 going to eat 18 bicycles? Even 
Monsieur Lotito, whose gastrointestinal system is—pardon 
the pun—made of steel, fi nds it diffi
  cult to eat all that Plexi-
glas, rubber, and real glass. “Rubber,” he has noted, “tastes 
horrible.” We’ll take his word on it.
✖  ✖  ✖
The Record:
 the same painting getting stolen four separate 
times
The Record Holder:
 Rembrandt’s 
Jacob III de Gheyn
 (1632)
It’s Unbreakable Because:
 
Jacob III de Gheyn
 is uniquely sus-
ceptible to theft because 1) Rembrandt is a very famous art-
ist, and 2) the painting is small enough to fi t in a pants pocket. 
Known as the “takeaway Rembrandt,” the portrait is now 
housed in a London museum under extraordinary security—
so don’t get any ideas.
✖  ✖  ✖
The Record:
 longest period between proposals of paradoxes 
and their solution
The Record Holder:
 Georg Cantor, who helped explain Zeno’s 
Achilles paradox 2,500 years after Zeno thought it up
It’s Unbreakable Because:
 Th
  ere aren’t a lot of theoretically 
solvable ancient math quandaries left unsolved. Zeno’s paradox 
states that, like, you can never walk 
through
 a door because fi rst 
you have to go halfway to the door, and then halfway again, ad 
infi nitum. Mostly, people kept walking through doors and not