People love being the best at something. The Ukrainian Book of Records is proof. Every year since 1989, up to 400 new records are added. Some of them are quite surprising.
Oksana Shykalyuk’s record is among them. In 2010, she set the record for having the longest natural eyelashes. They are 18.5 millimeters long, while the average length of a human eyelash is 10 millimeters.
Another hair-related record was set by Khrystyna Krechkivska, who could be dubbed Ukraine’s Rapunzel. In June 2016 she set the record for having the longest hair in Ukraine, at 2.45 meters. The world record is held by Xie Qiuping from China at 5.62 meters, measured on May 8, 2004.
Nadiya Shcherban is in the Ukrainian Book of Records for having the largest natural breasts. Scherban puts her size K breasts down to genetics, saying all of the women in her family have been big-breasted.
Some Ukrainians had to be quite creative to get into the book. Designer Dmytro Parhomchuk from Lutsk set a record in 2015 by making a dress out of coffee beans. He used 26,667 coffee beans to sew the dress, which weighs 4.5 kilograms and has a matching purse and shoes, also made with coffee beans.
Tatyana Kaluzhna, a jeweler from Donetsk, in 2013 produced a miner’s protective helmet from gold, silver and gems. It was recorded as the most expensive miner’s helmet in Ukraine, with a value of $43,000. That’s enough to buy at least 25,000 regular helmets.
Other remarkable headwear: Kyiv residents in 2013 built a giant hat — 4.5 meters in diameter — from 150 kilograms of plywood. There was space enough inside to fit over 25 people.
The people of Khmelnytsky have their own record: In 2014, they released 18,000 Chinese lanterns into the evening sky. To light them up, the organizers handed out about 20,000 boxes of matches to participants.
Zaporizhzhya painter and zoo owner Oleksander Pylyshenko made it to the Ukrainian Book of Records by living in a cage with a pair of African lions for 35 days. (Ukrinform)
Meanwhile, the people of Ternopil got themselves into the record book in 2014 by setting up a 210.6-meter-long barbeque. The record required 300 kilograms of pork and 20 cooks to prepare the meat. The previous record was held by Kyiv, with a 160-meter-long barbecue — equivalent to the height of a 50-story building.
The city of Kherson is also in the book, for the largest number of people simultaneously drinking yoghurt. In 2014, 1,144 marathon runners set the record right after the run — promoting the health benefits of dairy products in the process.
Setting records sometimes requires a lot of bravery and strength.
Yevhen Kalinin from Odesa in 2014 followed U.S. actor Jean-Claude Van Damme’s example and for almost 90 seconds managed to perform splits between two sports cars moving at a speed of 20 kilometers per hour.
Painter and zoo owner Oleksander Pylyshenko from Zaporizhzhya took 35 days to set his record. That’s how long he lived in a cage with a pair of African lions. The living conditions were the same for Pysarenko and the animals: They slept on wooden floorboards and had all their food given to them through the bars of the cage. During his stay, Pylyshenko completed 13 paintings and witnessed the birth of two baby lions. Pylyshenko said he wanted “to demonstrate that understanding between human beings and lions is easy to attain.”
Ukrainian strongwoman Olga Liaschuk skipped Ukraine’s Book of Records and went straight to the Guinness Book of World Records. She set her record in 2014, crushing three watermelons between her thighs in 14.65 seconds.
