The Guinness Book of World Records features both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world, including at least 50 records broken by Ukrainians or linked to Ukraine.
The most successful fields for Ukrainians have been aviation and sports. Most of the records in these areas were set in Ukraine’s Soviet era.
The engineers of the Kyiv-based Antonov aircraft manufacturing plant built the largest aircraft ever in 1988. The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Dream) cargo plane can carry a maximum weight of 640 tons. But so far, only one An-225 was built, and a second one is still under production.
There is one sad record in the book: The Chornobyl accident that took place in Ukraine in 1986 is listed as the worst nuclear reactor disaster ever.
“No systematic records were kept of subsequent deaths, but over 1.7 million people were exposed to radiation,” reads the Guinness Worlds Records website.
As for the achievements listed since Ukraine’s independence, one of the commonly known records is in outdoors pole vaulting. Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergey Bubka set his legend record in 1994 in Italy, when he jumped a height of 6.14 meters.
Bubka is mentioned in the book twice. He also holds the largest number of international achievements in athletic sports. Until 2014, he held a third record – for the highest pole vault indoors, but this record was broken. Bubka quit professional sports in the late 1990s. Today he is head of Ukraine’s Olympic Committee.
Along with Bubka, long jumper Inessa Kravets is mentioned in the book for the longest-ever triple jump. She set the record with her 15.5-meter-long jump in 1995 at a championship in Sweden.
But jumping is not the only sports where Ukrainians succeeded. Crimean Sergiy Naidych holds the world record for the longest windsurfing marathon. He set the record surfing in the pond in Simferopol in 2003. Being 58-year-old at the moment of the record, Naidych was surfing on a board for 71.5 hours.
Another enduring record was set by Ukrainians Theodore Rezvoy and Evgeniy Stoyanov. In 2013, they rode a gas scooter for two months while overcoming the distance between Odesa and Ulan Ude in Russia, crossing the whole of Eurasia. Their journey of 14,400 kilometers is considered the longest-ever journey on a scooter with a motor of 50 cubic centimeters.
Ukrainians are also responsible for some of the weirder records in the book. One of them is the record of the longest time spent in a direct, full-body contact with the snow. It was set by Oleksiy Gutsulyak in the City Park in Kolomyia in western Ukraine in 2013. Gutsulyak, a winter swimmer, was fully covered with snow for an hour while being naked.
“I was preparing for this for almost 10 years,” Gutsulyak told local online media Kolomyia Portal. “Before (setting the record) I practiced the whole winter – daily burying myself in snow and prolonging the stay.”
Another significant achievement is the largest doughnut mosaic. It was created with 7,040 doughnuts at Pampukh Festival in Lviv on Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7, 2012.
“After the attempt, all the doughnuts were distributed to the public who had gathered on Market Square, the venue where the mosaic was created,” said on the Guinness Record Book website.
Ukrainians are also responsible for the world’s longest reading marathon. The record was set by the students of Ostroh Academy in Ostroh in Rivne Oblast.
They set the record by reading poetry by Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s best-known poet, for 456 hours. During this time, they read Shevchenko’s famous book of poetry “Kobzar” 45 times. The marathon was dedicated to Shevchenko’s 200th birthday.
Some of the records are truly beautiful – like the longest composition of flowers made in Kharkiv in 2013. Its citizens set a line of 2.85 kilometers of marigolds and petunia flowers in vases, specially selected to represent the colors of Ukrainian flag.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn can be reached at [email protected].
