We're in the middle of summer, which means it is festival season!

While many of you may be spending a weekend watching your favourite bands and sleeping in a tent at a music festival, there are a wide variety of other reasons for such an event - as you'll find out in this rundown of record-breaking festivals:

#5 - Reading Festival

This weekend in the UK sees the 2013 Reading Festival take place, featuring such headline acts as Green Day, Eminem, and Nine Inch Nails. But did you know it is the oldest annual popular music festival? The three-day event has been staged since 1961, originally as the nomadic National Jazz (& Blues) Festival before moving to its permanent home in Reading in 1971. Over the years the festival has featured acts such as The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, and Nirvana.

#4 - Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival

Walla Walla in Washington, USA plays host to this celebration of onions. At the 2010 festival, Canada's Bob Blumer fought back the tears and set a new record for the fastest time to peel 50 pounds of onions, conquering them in just 2 minutes and 39 seconds.

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#3 - Festival of the Cuy

This annual festival in Huacho, Peru, is the largest guinea pig festival. Here, guinea pig is pitted against guinea pig in a series of contests to find the fattest, fastest and even best dressed!

#2 - Oktoberfest

While not taking place at the height of summer, no good festival list would be complete without mentioning Munich's annual Oktoberfest. The beer festival, which sprawls across an area of over 100 acres, was the largest beer festival by beer consumption in 2011. That year it was visited by 6.9 million people, who consumed a record 7.5 million litres of beer, in 35 beer tents offering a total of 105,000 seats!

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#1 - La Tomatina

Finally, and messiest of them all, is La Tomatina, the world's largest food fight. Held in t he town of Buñol, near Valencia, Spain on the last Wednesday of August each year since 1944, thousands of people take to the streets for up to an hour, throwing some 125 tonnes of tomatoes at each other. Thankfully, the local fire department are on hand to wash down the streets and everyone on them afterward.

Can't wait until next Wednesday's La Tomatina? Then why not watch the latest "Slo-Mo Test Lab" video from our OMG! YouTube channel - it's packed with so much tomato-smashing goodness, it counts as one of your five-a-day*!


(* = Watching videos on our YouTube channels does not constitute valuable nutritional intake, or replace any part of a well-balanced diet).