Charlotte has some cool (and wacky) world records thanks to ants, monster trucks & Cam
In today’s day and age, anyone is capable of a viral moment. And for better or worse, it can come at any time.
Just ask the Charlotteans who’ve made the Guinness Book of World Records.
Multiple Guinness world records have been set across the decades in and around Charlotte, according to the group’s online records, and the Charlotte Observer has had a hand in observing some of them.
From art projects to athletic achievements and even a medical emergency(?), they run the gamut from awe-inspiring to fascinating to … thought-provoking.
Here’s what to know about some of the wildest world records set in Charlotte:
Largest ant farm
Who says little creatures can’t do big things? With the help of the pest control company Terminix working at Discovery Place in April 2019, Charlotte became home to the largest ant farm — 0.085 m³ — in the Guinness records.
The farm is no longer on display, a Discovery Place representative told the Observer recently.
Most flyovers in a single path
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It was actually a record-setting number of aircrafts flying over the Charlotte area in a single flight path in September 2018. The Carolinas Freedom Foundation and the U.S. Marine Corps set the Guinness World Record for “Most sporting event flypasts (flyovers) in a single flight path” during the Patriotism Bowl that year.
Cam Newton passing records
What happens when an NFL MVP and a Youtuber put their minds together? In the case of then-Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton and Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, you get a handful of world records.
The duo, in the summer of 2019, teamed up to beat records previously set by other Youtubers and NFL players, the Observer reported at the time. Their records, per Guinness, were:
“Longest American football pass caught between the legs (team of two)”
“Farthest blindfolded catch of an American football (stationary)”
Largest unboxing
Unboxing is, for some reason, a thing. So much so that there’s a world record for it. And it was set in Charlotte!
The whole thing came together to surprise a 4-year-old in 2017, per Guinness.
“A Volvo VNL truck model, housed in a specially constructed 23.46 m (77 ft) cardboard box with cellophane windows,” was unboxed, setting the record for “largest item unboxed” at “21.95 m (72 ft).”
Fastest quarter-mile time for a monster truck
Charlotte is a hub of racing, so it tracks that even monster trucks would go faster here.
In 2012, a Tennessee-based driver set the Guinness world record for “Fastest quarter-mile time for a monster truck” at the zMAX Dragway. The truck “completed the quarter mile from a standing start in 13.175 seconds … reaching a top speed of 96.8 mph.”
Youngest appendectomy
Talk about starting out on a bad foot. A baby boy born at Charlotte Memorial Hospital back in 1977 still holds the Guinness world record for “Youngest person to have the appendix removed (male).”
His appendectomy happened at just 5 days old. One can only hope his life improved from there.
Largest paint brush mosaic
If you’re gonna sell paints and stains, you need to prove that you know your way around paints and stains. So it makes sense that Charlotte’s Olympic Paints and Stains would set the world record for “Largest paint brush mosaic (image).” The project, from June 2016, used more than 30,000 paint brushes to create the 30.86 m² image, per Guinness.
Most flashlights lit simultaneously
Who doesn’t love a nice moment when the whole crowd at an event lights up their flashlights together? The lights were especially bright at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2011, when Energizer set a Guinness world record for “Most flashlights lit simultaneously.”
A whopping 70,854 lights went up at once “as part of Energizer’s ‘Light up the Night’ campaign, urging the race fans to ‘flash their brights.’”
Largest toppling domino stones
When the dominoes fell in Charlotte in August 2014 they, like, really fell.
That’s when Prudential Financial, at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, set the Guinness world record for “Largest toppling domino stones.”
“The largest toppling domino stone measures 9.18 m (30 ft 1.5 in) in height, 4.57 m (15 ft) in width and 1.25 m (4 ft 1.5 in) in length,” Guinness says.
Honorable Mention: No-hand bike ride
Look, Ma! No hands! It was early in 1975 when then-eighth grader Jay Curtin “rode his bike non-stop 20 miles to the South Carolina line and back,” the Observer wrote at the time. The catch? He did it all hands free.
No, this record doesn’t appear in the online version of Guinness’s records. But that same database notes it’s incomplete, so we’ll happily give Curtin his flowers.
