UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

Donald “The Don” Bradman, (1908 – 2001), an Australian cricketer, the greatest batsman of all time, and some have called him “the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games”.

His 20-year career Test batting average is a peerless 99.94. His level was such that the Australian team captain quipped that he’s worth 3 batsmen. To try to stop him, the England team created dubious tactics known as the Bodyline. After a 6-year break due to World War II, he made a stirring comeback, captaining his country on a triumphant tour of England, undefeated.

Bradman in 1928

The number 99.94 has become not just cricket, but sports in general’s, iconic statistic. No other cricketer, ever or since, who’s played more than 20 Test match innings has done better than 61.

A rare occasion where Bradman scored zero, sometime 1932

Statistician Charles Davis has analysed the stats for some athletes widely acknowledged to be the best in their chosen sport, to see “the number of standard deviations that they stand above the mean for their sport.” In other words, to see how much better they are, represented in numbers, compared to their rivals:

- Bradman, cricketer, with his batting average as input, has a standard deviation of 4.4
- Pele, soccer, with goals per game average as input, has a standard deviation of 3.7
- Ty Cobb, baseball, with his batting average as input, has a standard deviation of 3.6
- Jack Nicklaus, golf, with number of major titles won as input, has a standard deviation of 3.5
- Michael Jordan, basketball, with average points per game as input, has a standard deviation of 3.4

The stats show that “no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket”.

To be as dominant as Bradman:

- a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392; Ty Cobb’s record is .366.
- a basketball player to score an average of 43.0 points per game; Michael Jordan’s record is 30.1.

I wonder how many endorsements he signed up with during his career, perhaps even included weight loss products.

It was reported that Nelson Mandela, finally released from prison after 27 years, on meeting an Australian visitor, the first question he asked was: “Is Sir Donald Bradman still alive?”

In 2000, when the Wisden Cricketers of the Century list was compiled, 100 members of the panel of cricket experts had to select their top 5 favourite cricketers: all 100 voted for Bradman.

In 2001, more than 50 years after he retired, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard called him the “greatest living Australian”.

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Lionel Tate (b. 1987) is the youngest American, and possibly the world, to ever be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2001, for beating up Tiffany Eunick, 6 to death. He was just 11 at that time, yet weighed 166 pounds.

At the time of the crime, Tate’s mother was Eunick’s babysitter. Tate’s mother was having a nap upstairs, so Tate was left alone with the girl. For some reason, he then stomped on the little 46-pound girl so violently that her liver tore apart, her skull and rib fractured, and her brain swollen, which the prosecution described as like falling from a 3-story building.

According to him, he was merely imitating moves of pro wrestlers.

In sentencing, the judge said:

The acts of Lionel Tate were not the playful acts of a child [...] The acts of Lionel Tate were cold, callous and indescribably cruel.

Later in life, he was in and out of trouble many times, including armed robbery. It would seem he’s destined to remain behind bars for the rest of his life. Blame it on his upbringing perhaps, but surprisingly I didn’t find any reference to drugs in his case. If that were the case, a rapid opiate detox could’ve done the trick. But if his living environment did not support a complete personal overhaul, not much could be ultimately hoped for.

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UPDATE 25 Feb 2010

She has resigned as bishop.

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24 Feb 2010

Margot Käßmann (or Margot Kaessman), 51, was appointed the head of Germany’s 25-million-strong Protestant Church in October 2009, the church’s first ever female leader. In 1999 she became Germany’s youngest bishop.

On 20th February 2010 she drove a VW belonging to her church past a red light in Hanover’s city centre while her blood alcohol level being 3 times over the legal limit.

She has admitted drink driving.

If previously she’d have no problems getting cheap auto insurance quotes from sites like www.carinsurancelist.com, that’s all in the past now.

She told a local paper:

I am shocked at myself that I could have made such a grave error.

She has been controversial for some time, being Germany’s first bishop to divorce 2 years ago. She was married to her husband for 26 years. She has 4 daughters.

Source
The BBC, 23 Feb 2010

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Francisco “Pancho” Varallo (born 5th February 1910) played as a forward for Argentina in the first World Cup final, on 30th July 1930. He is the only player still alive from that tournament which was held in Uruguay.

He was the youngest player in that first World Cup.

In that match, Uruguay, the Olympic champions, defeated Argentina 4-2 in front of 93,000 spectators. The next day was declared a national holiday in Uruguay, while in Buenos Aires, stones were thrown at the Uruguayan consulate.

A more recent photo of Varallo:

The stadium where the match was played:

One of the balls used in the final:

In the whole tournament, Varallo scored one goal, in a group match on 19th July 1930 against Mexico which Argentina won 6-3.

In 1933, he was topscorer in all of South America, with 34 goals. At club level, he played for Boca Juniors, in which he’s the highest ever goalscorer with 181 goals which stood for many years until it was broken by Martin Palermo in 2009! In fact, in his nineties, his sense of humour was intact: he was quoted to have said that he would have to come out of retirement if Palermo beat his record.

He did not play (not selected?) in the 1934 and 1938 World Cups.

He retired from professional football in 1940 aged 30.

He recently celebrated his 100th birthday.

Incredible, considering all that was achieved during a time when there was no such thing as catching up on no xplode reviews to enhance performance.

He has been awarded the FIFA order of merit, the body’s highest honour: it had only ever been given 3 times previously, to Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Bobby Moore. The Argentine Football Association honoured him by giving him a striped blue-and-white Argentina team shirt, emblazoned with the words “Varallo,” and what else but number 100 on the back.

Still, the pain of losing that final still lingered:

However, in my whole life I’ve never felt such a bitter pain as losing that World Cup Final against Uruguay in 1930.

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Suffering from public speaking anxiety and feeling bad about it? Don’t fret, rather count your blessings. The following surely don’t have any of that, yet didn’t have a happy ending.

The following is a partial list of the rich and famous who committed suicide through lethal suspension by a ligature.

Alexander McQueen, CBE, 40, four-time British Designer of the Year. On 11th February 2010, he was found dead, hanging in his wardrobe.

Jonathan Brandis, 27, who was a teen idol in the early 1990s when he played scientific prodigy Lucas Wolenczak in the TV series seaQuest DSV. Hanged himself November 2003. Friends were quoted to have mentioned that he was “lonely and depressed” about his faltering career.

Ian Curtis (1956 – 1980), lead singer, songwriter and lyricist of Joy Division, whose song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is considered by some as the best single of all time, and is listed in Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 songs of all time. On 18th May 1980 he hanged himself in his kitchen.

Justin Fashanu (1961 – 1998), professional English footballer who in 1981 became Great Britain’s first GBP1 million black soccer player when he moved to Nottingham Forest. In 1990 he became the first, and still the only prominent footballer to announce that he was gay. In the early hours of 3rd May 1998, he was found hanged in a lock-up garage he’d broken into.

Michael Hutchence (1960 – 1997), lead singer of rock band INXS, who’ve sold more than 30 million records worldwide. On 22nd November 1997, while INXS was on a world tour, he was found dead in his hotel room, in “a kneeling position facing the door” and “had used his black leather belt to tie a knot on the automatic door closure at the top of the door, and had strained his head forward into the loop so hard that the buckle had broken.”

Paul Hester (1959 – 2005), drummer of rock band Crowded House, which produced such classics as “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” “Fall at Your Feet” and “Weather with You”. On 26th March 2005 he committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a park near his house.

Chris Benoit (1967 – 2007), Canadian professional wrestler for WCW and later WWE, two-time world heavyweight champion, one of the most popular and talented technical wrestlers ever. On the weekend of his death, he was booked to win his 3rd world heavyweight championship. After killing his wife and son, he created a noose from the end of the cord of a weight machine to hang himself.

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K Chattu Kuttan, 90 of Sri Lanka and employee of Galle Face Hotel, Colombo is probably the world’s oldest, still working hotel doorman, and surely one of the world’s most famous hotel employees.

Slim all these years, all those standing up and walking around sure proved to be effective fat burners.

He has been an employee at the hotel for almost 70 years (since 1942), and a doorman for 18 years, and has seen it all:

- a Japanese Zero fighter plane crash-landed on the hotel grounds during World War II
- sex symbol Ursula Andress danced in the ballroom on New Year’s Eve 1976.
- hobnobbed with people such as Emperor Hirohito, Richard Nixon, Sir Laurence Olivier, George Bernard Shaw, Lord Mountbatten, Princess Elizabeth, Jawarharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Yuri Gagarin and Arthur C. Clarke.

He has made the cover of some of the world’s top travel publications, and his life story told in them.

It’s no wonder that guests would scramble to have a photo opportunity with him:

He still walks the one mile to work every morning and takes the bus home at the end of his afternoon shift.

When will he retire? In his own words: “Walking to work and the busy life at the hotel keeps me going.”

Source
Yahoo News, 13th Feb 2010

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Rocky_Balboas_Son’s posted a story recently about how he carried out the greatest Valentine’s Day revenge ever against his former girlfriend for cheating on him with some guy named Theo.

By the end of the story, she got dumped not once, but twice, on the V-Day no less.

The Story

What do you think? Some might contend that all those effort would only have a fleeting effect at best, and that the time expended could’ve been better spent doing fat burner reviews…

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In recent times, William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft has topped the list of the world’s wealthiest individuals countless times, with an all-time high hitting USD101 billion in 1999. A distant second is Carlos Slim Helú at a mere USD69.8 billion in 2007.

But is Bill Gates the richest man who ever lived?

Not even close.

The following people were wealthier than Gates by a very long shot; that yes, they could afford to pay for the best hemorrhoid treatment!

The Rothschild family (The House of Rothschild), that German-Jewish European business dynasty that established banking and finance companies, during the 19th century, owned the world’s largest fortune in private hands, and surely in modern history. In today’s USD dollars, the total wealth they owned would’ve easily been in “the many hundreds of USD dollar billions, if not in the US dollar trillions.” In their prime, the family had at least 41 palaces, “of a scale and luxury perhaps unparalleled even by the richest Royal families.” The very name “Rothschild” has become synonymous with extravagance and seemingly unlimited wealth: the family was famous for its art collection and its philanthropy.

Pictured above is Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744 – 1812), the man who started it all, one of the most influential businessmen of all time and a “founding father of international finance”.

Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 BC – 53 BC), Roman general, politician, part of the First Triumvirate, and has a legendary greed for amassing riches. At the height of his powers, some historians put his wealth at more than 200 million sestertii. That’s equal to the total annual budget of the Roman treasury! He is surely the richest individual of that time and probably of all time. He’s noted for assisting the then young and poor Julius Ceaser. Apparently molten gold was poured into his mouth shortly after his death to quench his thirst for worldly possessions.

John D. Rockefeller (1839 – 1937) revolutionized the petroleum industry and in 1916 became America’s, and possibly the world’s nominal first US dollar billionaire. Often regarded as the richest person in all of history. Adjusted to today’s dollars, his wealth has been placed between USD392 billion and USD663.4 billion!

Andrew Carnegie (1835 – 1919), founder of the Carnegie Steel Company was one of the most famous industry leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his life was a true “rags to riches” story. A business rival of Rockefeller, some has estimated his wealth to be USD297.8 billion in today’s US dollars.

Tsar Nicholas II (1868 – 1918), the last Emperor of Russia, who, with his family were killed by the Bolsheviks reputedy had a net worth of USD290.7 billion in today’s US dollars. That would make him the wealthiest monarch / head of state of all time.

Asaf Jah VII (1886 – 1967), was the last ruler of the State of Hyderabad and Berar, before it became part of India. During that time, he was reputedly the world’s richest man, at USD2 billion in the early 1940s. Inflation adjusted, that may be equivalent to USD225 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars.

How about King Solomon? Any guy who had 700 wives and 300 concubines must’ve been damn rich!

Source
Wikipedia

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Michael Jackson’s Thriller, that 14-minute music video was first shown on MTV at midnight, 2nd December 1983, when MTV was 2 years old. It’s often called the greatest music video of all time. I call it the moment when I abandoned my books for TV.

It cost USD500,000 – an amazing sum at that time.

But it was worth it: demand was such that MTV played it twice every hour.

It had an unsurpassed effect on popular culture, “a watershed moment for the music industry for its unprecedented merging of filmmaking and music.”

It is probably the best selling music video of all time, with 9 million units sold.

The girl in the video is former Playboy centerfold Ola Ray, 23 at the time of the video’s release.

Partial video:

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The first IBM PC was introduced in 1981, but perhaps custom mouse pads were not available yet then. Coincidentally, the world’s first 24-hour TV channel showing exclusively music videos, MTV: Music Television started broadcasting at 12.01am on 1st August 1981 with John Lack’s voice speaking “Ladies and Gentlemen, Rock and Roll.” At that time, only a select few thousand on cable in New Jersey could view it.

The very first video shown was appropriately “Video Killed The Radio Star” by British group The Buggles.

A video of the first 10 minutes of MTV’s broadcast:

The 2nd song? Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run.”

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Here’s a list of the world’s most treacherous peaks – you’d need more than the usual physical training to even consider going up any of these; you’d need to consume colon and body cleansers too.

The world’s most dangerous mountain could very well be Annapurna I, at 8,091m the world’s 10th highest mountain. It has the world’s highest climber fatality rate: an incredible 40%. That means out of every 5 climbers attempting to conquer it, 2 would die. Still, it has been conquered even in winter (unlike K2), and it was the first “eight thousander” (at least 8,000m high peak) to be conquered. That honour went to Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, of a French expedition on 3rd June 1950. That’s 3 years earlier than the Edmund Hillary/Tenzing Norgay conquest of Everest. As of 2005, only 103 summit attempts have been successful, with 56 fatalities, most of them due to avalanches. Those killed include famed Russian climber Anatoli Boukreev in 1997, Christian Kuntner in 2005 and Iñaki Ochoa in 2008. The great Slovienian climber, the late Tomaž Humar climbed it solo in 2007.

The second could be K2, which, at 8,611m, is the second-highest mountain in the world after Mount Everest. Dubbed “The Savage Mountain”, it is extremely difficult to conquer and has the second highest climber fatality rate among the “eight thousanders”: 25% i.e. for every four people who have reached the top, one has died trying. It has never been attempted during winter.

In terms of intimidating factor, nothing comes close to Nanga Parbat, the world’s 9th highest mountain. Dubbed “The Man Eater” and “Killer Mountain”, it boasts the largest mountain face in the world, the Rupal Face – a 4,600m vertical drop – that’s higher than Mount Kinabalu! Apparently only two climbers have ever succeeded ascending up this face all the way to the summit. In August 2005, renowned Slovenian mountaineer Tomaž Humar, was rescued on the Face at 5,900m after being stuck there for 6 days. He’s circled in the following photo – surely the loneliest place in the world:

Compare what I mentioned above to Everest’s stats: as of 2008, there had been 4,102 successful ascents by around 2,700 people, with 210 deaths.

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The 50+ yr old Grammy Awards, which celebrates “outstanding achievements in the music industry” is arguably the world’s top music-related awards.

There are many categories, but it is generally accepted that the top Grammy Awards are:

- Album of the Year, awarded to the performer and producers of an album.
- Record of the Year, awarded to the performer and producers of a song.
- Song of the Year is awarded to the writer/writers of a song.

When it comes to numbers, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra leaves everybody trailing far behind. With 60 wins, Sir Georg Solti is a distant second at 31. Perhaps even these 2 names don’t ring a bell with many youngsters today. Among instantly recognisable names, U2 and Stevie Wonder are at 22. The late King of Pop, Michael Jackson is at 13, as is former Beatle Paul McCartney. Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen is at 20 and Eric “God, Slowhand” Clapton at 17.

But how about the most winners of the hallowed top 3 categories?

The following persons have won Album of the Year three times: Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, David Foster, Phil Ramone and Daniel Lanois.

Paul Simon has won Record of the Year 3 times.

U2 and Henry Mancini have won Song of the Year twice each.

Christopher Cross was the undisputed king of the Grammys in 1981, where he won, and remains the only person ever to do so, all 4 “General Field” awards that year: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist.

Michael Jackson won a record 8 Grammys in 1984, the most in one sitting by an artiste. It was equalled by Santana in 2000. In fact, Santana’s album Supernatural won 9 Grammys that year.

Drummer Hal Blaine played on SIX consecutive records that won Record of the Year.

Brian McKnight must be the most frustrated person ever to be nominated for a Grammy Award: he was nominated 16 times without winning a single one. Oooh, that’s so sad; someone give him a Nascar jacket as consolation!

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