Year in World Records - December: Big mouths, iconic astronauts and super-sized board games

By Kevin Lynch

Published 31 December 2016

With a year packed full of amazing world record achievements drawing to a close, Guinness World Records is taking a month-by-month look back over the most impressive, exciting and game-changing accomplishments that have happened in 2016.

We kicked off December with news of Borussia Dortmund supporter Christian Kinner from Germany securing a place in the Guinness World Records 2017 Edition for performing the world’s Longest shout.

Christian's feat was part of a radio contest to find a sports fan who could shout the longest “goal” in the style of Latin American soccer commentators who stretch their vowels.

The soccer fan yelled “Tor” – which is the German word for “goal” – for an impressive 43.56 sec.

The month also saw us shine a spotlight on an equally impressive German with a big mouth.

Bernd Schmidt earned himself a spot in this year’s book for having a mouth that stretches a whopping 8.8cm, which is just over the length of a baseball, earning him the title for the Largest gape.

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Bernd wouldn’t have been in this year’s 2017 edition super stars had it not been for his youngest son, who saw the previous holder's record in the 2015 edition of the book.

Students and staff of the Studentenvereniging Ceres (student association) in Wageningen, Netherlands passed Go and landed in the record books after creating the world’s Largest board game, Monopoly®.

The to-scale replica of the iconic board game measured an enormous 900.228 m² (9,689.97 ft²) and was made of 804 individual panels attached together.

Sponsored by the game’s producer Hasbro, the university students also created a massive die and houses to complete the game.

Once it was all put together on a sports field, the university students got a chance to play the giant game, with participants standing in for playing tokens and acting as the silver boots, iron, top hat and wheel barrow.

In a year sadly marked by the deaths of a number of pioneering public figures, December saw us pay tribute to iconic U.S. Astronaut John Glenn, pictured above, at the age of 95.

A key figure in the 20th century space race, Glenn set the title for world’s Oldest astronaut in 1998 at the age of 77 years and 103 days, after launching into space as part of NASA's Discovery STS-95 mission.

An equally important figure in the exploration of space, we were honoured to have Dr Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr provide an exclusive foreword in the new Guinness World Records 2017 Edition.

A man who will forever be known for the central role he played in the First manned landing on the moon in 1969, our Editor-In-Chief Craig Glenday caught up with Buzz in London to talk about his remarkable achievements in an exclusive interview.

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As you'd expect for December, the month was marked by a number of Christmas-themed record attempts. Arguably the most spectacular of the festive title bids took place in Latvia.

To make the act of switching on the town’s Christmas tree lights even more exiting, e-commerce company Scandiweb constructed the world’s Largest Rube Goldberg for the people of Riga.

Possibly the most elaborate way anyone has turned on some festive lights, the chain reaction consisted of 412 individual mechanical steps.

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Finally, we ended the month by reporting on how Al Jazirah Ford Racing drifted into the record books in a cloud of pink smoke during part of a campaign to raise awareness about breast cancer.

Led by professional race drivers Abdulhadi Al-Qahtani and Muath Al-Essa, the Al Jazirah team achieved a new Guinness World Records title for the Largest tyre mark image on the vast asphalt outside a car storage centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.