A few days ago, some 850 tall people in Utrecht broke the world record for the most tall people in one place, a record previously set by Australia, with 136 tall people. The Guinness Book of Records still needs to approve the Dutch attempt – they had three observers going around measuring people’s height.

Tall is meant to be about 1,80 metres for women and 1,90 metres for men. Knowing that the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, I guess it was just a case of getting them a lot of them together in one place. People came from all over Europe and even the United States and Canada to participate.

The record attempt was organised by the Klub Lange Mensen (the Long People Club) who have 3,500 members, and who recently made sure the minimum height of entrances to building in the Netherlands was increased. The club also works with Dutch Railways to make sure tall peole can sit comfortably in their trains.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Dom Tower, Utrecht by Massimo Catarinella, some rights reserved)

Started on Monday 12 May, 3FM radio DJ Giel Beelen has broken the world record for the longest, continuous radio show with 190 hours, breaking the older record of 189 set by Belgian radio DJ Lennart Creël only two weeks ago.

To celebrate Beelen’s 10 year anniversary on the airwaves with his morning show, going for a world record seemed fitting. Although the show was non-stop, he was allowed to sleep five minutes an hour if needed and every second day he could get three hours of shut eye.

Giel Beelen is well known by the Dutch audience for regularly taking part in the Glass House (‘Het Glazen Huis’), a glass house with a radio broadcast set up on main squares in different cities every year a week before Christmas. The DJs go without anything to eat to collect money for Red Cross projects.

(Link: nos.nl)

More than 400 bands broke the world record for the longest concert last Saturday by playing 363 hours (15 days and a bit) consequetively in Leeuwarden as part of the Serious Request charity event.

The record attempt produced 17,000 euro through ticket sales for fighting lethal diarrhoea in Africa and Asia. The entire event, which takes place annually while three 3FM radio DJs lock themselves up in a glass house in order to be the focal point for all kinds of spin-off charity drives, produced over 12 million euro for the good cause.

Leeuwarder Courant writes that after the record was broken, the success was celebrated by having a band—the Broken Brass Ensemble—play some more music.

(Illustration: 3FM Serious Request logo)

Lisa Coolen (15) from Heel in Limburg shattered the world record for the highest martial arts kick on 12 May.

She managed to kick 2.35 metres high with a Mai Tobi Geri (‘jumping front kick’).

The previous record stood at 1.98 metres and was held by actress and martial artist Zara Phythian from England and by Bhawna Purohit from India.

Karateka Lisa Coolen broke the record at Kick for Hope, an event raising money for cancer research. Earlier that day taekwondoka Malissa Doppenberg from Urmond, also Limburg, had already improved the record to 2.20 metres.

The record for martial arts high kick unassisted for men stands at 2.94 and is held by Jesse Frankson from the USA.

(Link: Kick for Hope. Photo by Flickr user Thedianna, some rights reserved.)

The biggest gathering of red heads in the world took place in Breda yesterday, netting the city on Noord-Brabant a fresh mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

Some 5,000 gingers from over 60 countries descended upon the city for its annual Red Head Day. To break the old record of most natural red heads gathered in a single enclosed space, Breda had to collect more than 892 of them. In the end 1,255 red haired people did the job. The old record was established in 2010.

Brabant’s cities seem to like these record attempts. In 2007 Tilburg set the world fire breathing record, and later that same Breda set the record for cola fountains.

RTL Nieuws has a couple of photos of the event.

(Link: De Stentor. Photo of last years visitors by Eddy Van 3000, some rights reserved)

The Dutch city of Baarn, Utrecht has bumped off Hell, Michigan (what’s in a name) as record holder of the longest hearse parade on Thursday, 30 August 2012. The American Just Hearse’N Around group had 51 hearses on 17 September 2011, while the Dutch managed to rally 107 hearses and easily set a Guinness World Record.

Nuvema, the group who held the attempt yesterday, was enthusiastic about the turnout and also the media attention paid to hearses, which is good for business. Check out the pictures of all the hearses that participated).

(Link: perssupport.nl, Photo of Hearse by Jason L. Parks, some rights reserved).

The town of Limmen, North Holland got 1800 volunteers with loads of free time to build the highest tower ever made of Lego blocks. The tower is made up of 700,000 Lego pieces and is 30,52 metres high, breaking the old Guinness Book of Records record by a mere 30 cm (see pic), set by the city of Oslo, Norway.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

We wrote about Boyan Slat, the water rocket obssessed teenager (that’s what his mom called him on telly recently) who shot off some 101 rocket simultaneously last year on 20 June. This year, with the help of students from the Delft University of Technology and sponsoring from the university, he launched 213 rockets, which earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

(Dear Dutch press: you’ve never spelled ‘Guinness’ properly as far as I can remember. Please learn to spell it with 2 nn and 2 ss. It’s that simple, think of a car with four wheels.)

Somehow, as I said last year, this kid is probably going to go to the Delft University of Technology when he grows up.

Since then, Slat’s modest website wetenschapvoordummies (Science for dummies) has been replaced by a much slicker site called gottalaunch with all kinds of pictures, videos and cool stuff.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo: ad.nl)

On Saturday, 12 January at 10:53 am residents of the neighbourhood Tuinwijk in Utrecht celebrated the birth of Helena Dijkhuizen, the 300,000 resident of the city. The city wanted to make a big deal and threw her parents the biggest maternity party (‘kraamfeest’ in Dutch) ever. Everyone was invited and the neighbourhood offered the traditional coffee and beschuit (Dutch-type rusk) with special red and white sprinkles (‘muisjes’). ‘Beschuit met muisjes’ is what people traditionally eat when a child is born. They have blue sprinkles for boys and pink for girls, so the red was to make a point, I imagine. When a Royal child is born, they serve orange and white sprinkles, orange representing Dutch royalty.

The city wants to get its party in the Guinness Book of World Records and so we don’t know at this time if that is the case.

(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo: helmaschreuders.web-log.nl)