UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

Pancho Gonzales (1928 – 1995), was the world’s top ranked tennis player for a still-unequalled 8 years in the 1950s and early 1960s, playing professionally during that period.

Astonishingly, he learnt the game on his own, without coaching of any kind.

As an amateur in the late 1940s he was US champion twice.

Prior to the Open era (before 1968), many considered him the greatest player in the history of tennis.

Unfortunately, due to the rules prohibiting pros from competing at the Grand Slams before 1967, he was ineligible to compete in them at the height of his career. He most definitely would have won a handful of them during 1949-1967 when he was at his prime.

The first Grand Slam of the Open era was the French Open in 1968, when Gonzales was already 40 years old. Still, he took part, despite having been semi-retired for a few years.

And amazingly, he defeated 1967 defending champion Roy Emerson in the quarterfinals, before losing in the semis to another legend, Rod Laver.

Later he participated at Wimbledon and lost in the 3rd round and went quite far (5th round/quarters) at the US Open.

An article from a 1999 edition of Sports Illustrated, named him 15th in their “20 favourite athletes of the 20th century” and wrote: “if earth was on the line in a tennis match, the man you want serving to save humankind would be Ricardo Alonso Gonzalez.” So apparently, not Pete Sampras, not Bjorn Borg, not anybody else.

Prominent tennis commentator Bud Collins seconded that in 2006 when he wrote in MSNBC: “If I had to choose someone to play for my life, it would be Pancho Gonzalez.”

Ref:
Wikipedia

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Apparently it’s what Venus Williams wore in the first round of the 2010 French Open, in her victorious match against Patty Schnyder.

Her performance was not captured the audience’s imagination – her outfit did, resulting in whistles and whispers as she appeared at Court Suzanne Lenglen.

It’s a “lacy black-and-red outfit, which gave the illusion of being see-through”. The bright red trim on the bodice and the corset look made her look more at home in a cancan chorus line rather than in a grand slam tennis match.

She wore it again in a later match in the same tournament.

At a press conference, she explained:

Lace has never been done before in tennis, and I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time. The illusion of just having bare skin is definitely for me a lot more beautiful.

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Grunting / shrieking / screaming / exhaling in tennis is rather common these days, ever since the “trend” was “popularised” by the likes of Monica Seles and, going further back, Jimmy Connors.

More common among the women, the more famous grunters include Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva, Victoria Azarenka and Rafael Nadal.

But the loudest amongst all the pros could be Michelle Larcher de Brito (b. 1993) of Portugal, who reached a world ranking of 76 in 2009, reportedly could hit 109 decibels, almost as loud as a lion roaring (110 decibels). In contrast, former Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova’s loudest grunt was a mere 101 decibels.

Example:

Some comments on youtube:

Everytime she hits the ball it sounds like a little girl fell off a cliff.

I got a friend who has a cat, and the cat seems to relax while it’s home alone only by listening to Michelle Larcher de Brito playing tennis.

She is giving birth!! Seems like a hard delivery.

Good God, this makes Seles’s shriek sound like an ant farting.

She has defended herself:

I could (stop grunting), but, you know, it won’t feel natural, because it feels like something is missing in my game if I just stop.

Nobody can tell me to stop grunting. Tennis is an individual sport and I’m an individual player. If they have to fine me, go ahead, because I’d rather get fined than lose a match because I had to stop grunting.

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Traditionally composed of amateur players, a 1989 rule change by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) allowed the USA to field professional players.

The original “Dream Team” promptly won the gold medal at the next Olympics – the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Defeating opponents by an average of almost 44 points, that team is often regarded as the greatest collection of talent on one team in basketball history. In fact, it was arguably the strongest team in the history of sports.

Any sport.

Of the 12 players on the team, 10 would be named in 1996 among the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, which is the NBA’s official list of the 50 greatest players of the league’s first 50 years. As of 2011 eleven of the twelve players on the roster (all except Christian Laettner) have been elected to the Hall of Fame.

Never mind the fact that some of the players were way past their prime and were probably more into rv repair than top-class basketball.

Roster

1. David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs
2. Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz
3. Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics
4. Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls
5. Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers
6. Charles Barkley of the Phoenix Suns
7. Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks
8. Christian Laettner of Duke University; the NCAA’s player of the year, he was the only non-professional player selected – he was selected over Shaquille O’Neal for the final spot on the roster. Why? Because apparently it’s a tribute to the history of college players representing the country.
9. Chris Mullin of the Golden State Warriors
10. Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls
11. Clyde Drexler of the Portland Trail Blazers
12. John Stockton of the Utah Jazz

Coach: Chuck Daly of the Detroit Pistons

The team’s games usually had opposing teams asking for pregame photo opportunities with their idols, and of course opponents.

The team made its debut in June 1992 at the Tournament of the Americas, the Olympic basketball qualifying event for the Americas. In the first match, it defeated Cuba 136–57, a winning margin of 79 points, which led the Cuban coach Miguel Calderón Gómez to quip “you can’t cover the sun with your finger.”

A video of that match

In the next group games, the USA defeated Canada 105-61 (44 points difference), Panama 112-52 (60 points difference) and Argentina 128-87 (41 points difference). In the semis, it defeated Puerto Rico 119-81 (38 points difference), and in the final it defeated Venezuela 127-80 (47 points difference).

At the 1992 Olympics, in the group stages, the team defeated:

1 Angola 116-48 (68 points difference)
2 Croatia 103-70 (33 points difference)
3 Germany 111-68 (43 points difference)
4 Brazil 127-83 (44 points difference)
5 Spain 122-81 (41 points difference)

In the quarterfinals, the USA defeated Puerto Rico 115-77 (38 points difference).

In the semifinals, it defeated Lithuania 127-76 (51 points difference).

The final was the closest match the Dream Team had at the Olympics, defeating Croatia 117-85 by a “mere” 32 points. The Croatian players played for Yugoslavia until 1991, and Yugoslavia won the 1990 World Championships and finished second at the 1988 Olympics behind the Soviet Union, which by 1992 had broken up, hence you can say they were the reigning world champions.

The Croatian team featured superstars such as Dino Radja, Toni Kukoč and Dražen Petrović. They even led 25-23 in the first few minutes before being overwhelmed by the superiority of the Dream Team.

Highlights of the final

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Samuel Wanjiru (born November 1986) of Kenya won the marathon at the 2008 Olympics in Olympic record time (2:06:32), the first Kenyan to win Olympic gold in the event. The feat shattered the 24-year old Olympic record of 2:09:21 which was set by Carlos Lopes of Portugal in the 1984 Olympiad.

On 15th May 2011, he died when he fell off his house’s balcony after an argument with his wife. It’s still unclear whether it was suicide.

He was just 24.

Has any other reigning Olympic champion (summer or winter) died so young?

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Munich RE is a German reinsurance company, one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, with branches all over the world, including Malaysia.

It was reported by the BBC on 20th May 2011 that in 2007, the company held a party to reward its top salesmen where they were given prostitutes to do as they liked, 100% paid for. The place: thermal baths of Budapest, Hungary. There were 100 people and 20 hookers.

Now that’s truly something – if they gave away Table Rock real estate probably nobody would’ve made any noise.

For a respectable multinational company, this is probably unprecedented!

This was revealed by a spokesman of its divisions, Ergo. He added that the people who had a hand in organising it had left the company. He added that “this was not the usual way of rewarding their employees” and that “they’ve taken all the right steps to prevent it happening again.”

Source
The BBC

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…and it’s not from 1986. Taken when he was manager of the Argentine national football team during World Cup 2010.

I think it’s safe to say football was not on his mind at that point in time.

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Miss Landmine is a beauty pageant with a unique requirement to enter: you must be a victim of, you’ve guessed it, landmines.

It’s the brainchild of Morten Traavik of Norway, to raise public awareness about the many landmines still out there, and what happened to its victims.

The first Miss Landmine was held in Angola in 2008. The country was chosen because there are more than 80,000 landmine victims there since the 30-year civil war which started in 1972. Even though the war is long over, the randomly planted landmines are still claiming victims.

The second Miss Landmine was held in Cambodia in 2009. Landmines were planted there in 1970-5.

Miss Landmine 2009 was Dos Sopheap, 19, a student, crowned in a secret ceremony inside Cambodia in December 2009. Secret because the Cambodian government banned the pageant. She comes from the province of Battambang, one of the world’s most heavily mined areas. She lost her leg in 1996 to a Yugoslavia-made PMA-2 anti-personnel mine costing USD10. For winning the contest, she received USD1,000 prizemoney for her education and a USD15,000 custom-made titanium prosthesis from Norway’s leading orthopaedic centre. All contestants received at least USD300 cash, which would enable them to purchase household items or set up a small business when they go back home to their villages.

The girls are so brave, scott kay jewels for everyone!

In early 2010 she received the finished leg

Source
Blogserius

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It’s either Ronnie Coleman or Lee Haney. Both Coleman and Haney have won Mr Olympia a staggering 8 times each, consecutively.

Haney (b. 1959, 5’11″, 111kg) won from 1984 to 1991, while Coleman (b. 1964, 5’11″, 135kg) won from 1998 to 2005.

Haney and Coleman side by side

Compare that to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (b. 1947, 6’2″, 113kg) 7 titles: 6 consecutively from 1970 to 1975 and one more in 1980, and Dorian Yates’ (b. 1962, 5’10″, 110kg) 6 consecutive titles from 1992 to 1997.

Mr Olympia, not Mr Universe, is generally regarded as the greatest bodybuilding tournament in the world. It is a professional international men’s bodybuilding contest. Winning it is considered the highest achievement in the sport of professional bodybuilding.

Honourable mention: Lou “The Incredible Hulk” Ferrigno’s (b. 1951, 6’5″, 130kg) best achievement at Mr Olympia is 2nd (1974). In 1975, he finished 3rd.

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It was reported in June 2011 that Karen Butler, 56 of Oregon, USA went to a dentist in early 2010. After some anaesthesia and work done on her teeth, she suddenly found herself talking in a British accent. The dentist said she’d talk normally in a little while, but no, she did not.

She has never travelled any further then Mexico.

A neurologist diagnosed her with foreign accent syndrome, an exceedingly rare neurological disorder: only about 60 cases reported worldwide since the 1900′s.

He said she might have suffered a mild stroke which caused problems to the part of her brain that handles speech pattern and intonation.

So the accent became permanent, and recently became more German-sounding, or perhaps eastern European-sounding (read: Dracula):

The following youtube video was uploaded May 2011

Possibly the most famous case of the syndrome happened in Norway in either 1941 or 1942, when Astrid L, 30, of Oslo was hit by shrapnel during a bomb raid. The injury made her talk like of all things, a German and as you know Germans were not really well liked in Europe at that time, so she was suddenly suspected of something evil.

In another case, Sarah Colwill, of Devon, England, had a severe migraine attack in March 2010 that an ambulance was called. When she arrived at the hospital she was talking like a Chinese woman:

One could only imagine the funny look she’d get when she goes shopping for ATV Parts for her 4×4 at her usual place.

Source
Daily Mail UK, 2nd June 2011

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The first AIDS cases were reported in the US in June 1981. That’s 30 years ago, but there’s still no known cure or vaccine, although nowadays there are AIDS & HIV treatments that can slow down the disease.

Since then, 30 million have died, and right now there are about 34 million with HIV. Around 2 million people will die of it every year.

However, a notable exception is Timothy Ray Brown of San Francisco, the world’s first and so far only person who was apparently cured of AIDS.

Brown in May 2011

In 1995, he was working as a translator in Berlin, Germany when he found out that he had HIV. After more than 10 years taking various medications, he was down with leukemia, which is not related to HIV. Then he was given “an experimental transplant of bone marrow with cells that contained an unusual natural variant of the CCR5 cell-surface receptor.”

As of December 2010 (about 4 years later), when checked, there’s no more HIV in his blood. He needed no medicine either.

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The Guardian reported on 6th June 2011 that The Human Centipede (2010) was “proudly” called the most horrific film ever made. It was classified 18, no cuts, for cinema and DVD.

A still from the movie

It tells the story of 2 American girls on road journey through Europe. Reaching Germany, their car broke down in the woods. Searching for help, they find a villa. They awoke the next day to find themselves trapped in a basement with a Japanese man. Enter Dr Heiter, who wants to be the first person ever to surgically stitch together people via their gastric systems, anus to mouth, creating the human centipede.

That sounds like a pretty terrible thing to do.

Official trailer

This year, its Dutch director, Tom Six, then created a sequel, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), in which a man aroused after watching the first movie goes on to recreate the events of the first film, perhaps in a metal buildings no less. A scene in the movie has him

…wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the end of the centipede, having become aroused by the sight of his victims being forced to defecate into each others’ mouths.

Wow, definitely not a normal summer blockbuster!!

This prompted the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to ban it outright, one of only 11 movies that have suffered this fate in the board’s almost 100-year history.

BBFC said the first movie was, even though it’s “tasteless and disgusting”, still OK for release because the “centipede was the product of a revolting medical experiment”, but Part II cannot be given the green light because “its own centipede is the object of the protagonist’s depraved sexual fantasy. There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience.”

Source

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There are apparently a few hundred mountains in the world that are still not climbed, and quite a lot of them are more than 7,000m high.

There are several contenders for this title:

Gangkhar Puensum, 7,570m, Bhutan

Probably strongest contender. Mountaineering was allowed in Bhutan only relatively recently viz. 1983. 4 expeditions have so far made the attempt for the summit, all failed. Since 1994 the country has banned climbing of mountains higher than 6,000m; in 2003 mountaineering was totally banned, so no further attempts are possible.

Saser Kangri II East, 7,513m, Kashmir

Probably highest unclimbed non-prohibited mountain.

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The BBC reported on 27th May 2011 that there are only 3 countries in the world where divorce is outlawed: Malta, the Philippines and of course Vatican City.

Ed: That’s pretty few: perhaps as few as the number of companies peddling converters of vga to hdmi cables.

As expected, Roman Catholics make up the majority of the people there.

Still, in some other Catholic-majority countries, one could already get legally divorced, like in East Timor, Honduras, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Martinique, Spain, Argentina, Colombia and Italy. At least 90% of the people of those countries are Catholics. Compare that to the Philippines’ 80%.

In Malta, if you really want to divorce, you have to either live abroad (if both partners are Maltese), or if one partner is not Maltese, apply to divorce on the other partner’s home country.

Otherwise, you can legally only go for separation, or the more complicated annulment.

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