Update: Canada has surpassed the United States in the aerospace industry. Thanks a lot, Obama!

Dozens of skiers in Quebec, Canada, take part in a world record attempt, performing a 30 person mass backflip on skis. The participants hold hands as they jump and all land neatly. This is their second attempt at the jump at Mont Saint-Sauveur in the Laurentian mountains.

There’s so much to love about this clip. How low the skiers have to go to pull off a 30 person backflip, how they kinda look like somebody’s stitches when they’re in the air, the wonderfully-Canadian responses from the crowd (“whoa ho!”) and my favorite, the SNOWMAN MOUNTAIN. We should turn every snowy hill into a snowman. This should not be optional.

Get your shit together, America. We should be prepping for the 31-man backflip launch right now. Don’t let the onset of summer keep us from being the best in the world at everything. Well, everything useless.

[video via SportsTV]

It has been a while since we last checked in on some of the more unique world record holders, from the world’s fattest woman to the other world’s fattest woman, as well as all of their lovers that have come and gone in between. Unfortunately, our spotlight is only big enough for one of these women at a time, and this week’s star is 39-year old Mikel Ruffinelli, who unlike those other rotund record holders, has managed to have her cake and eat it, too, in that she has a world record and her health isn’t in horrific danger. Well, according to her at least.

Ruffinelli currently holds the record for the world’s largest hips, as her body’s circumference measures an incredible eight feet, and you can leave your judgments at the salad bar, because she is wide with pride.

‘I love my shape and I see no reason to diet because I don’t have health problems,’ explains Mikel, has a proportionally small 40-inch waist. ‘Men don’t fancy skinny girls, they like an hourglass figure.’ (Via the Daily Mail)

Just for perspective, this is what an hourglass looks like. But again, Ruffinelli is proud of what she has accomplished, despite the remarkable limitations that she’s chosen to live with.

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In 2007, Englishman Marek Turowsk had a dream – he wanted to set the world land speed record for a couch. It’s a bold, silly dream, sure. But who are we to deny a man’s ambition? Within a year, Turowsk showed the world that dreams do come true, as he launched his couch with a rocket or engine or something like that inside of it to a mind-blowing speed of 148 km/h. My conversion may be off but I think that’s like 1,000 miles per hour.

Sadly, Australia’s Paul McKinnon said, “F*ck your couch” this week and shattered Turowsk’s record by driving his couch 163 km/h. That’s like light speed, I think. So why do you do this? Better yet, how do you do this?

“It’s the oddest vehicle we’ve ever built,” he said.

“With race cars, you can use the aerodynamic body kit … but with the couch, it was a matter of just doing what we could. We tried to break the airflow with the coffee table.”

(Via The Herald Sun)

As for that “Why?” question, the answer is pretty simple – money. The coffee table was presumably added because the coffee company Ice Break came up with the idea for McKinnon and his team to break this record so they could add a coffee table to their couch and call it cross-promotional. Whatever, a company could offer me a million dollars to swallow a condom full of scorpions and I’d probably check to make sure my camera was charged.

I just miss the days when America had competitive leisure furniture vehicles. Time to find your priorities, Obama.

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Following up a story from a few weeks ago, the residents of Fremont, Nebraska can finally breathe a heavy sigh of relief. They’re world record holders.

The Guinness Book of World Records has declared that the disgusting 1,652-pound pile of Spam on a giant piece of bread qualifies as the world’s largest open-faced sandwich, barely beating out Somalia’s dust on a cracker.

Mayor Scott Getzschman said his city recently received word that the 1,652-pound Spam sandwich – or “Spamwich” – created July 9 as part of the John C. Fremont Days celebration has been certified by the Guinness World Records.

“I’m excited for Fremont and I’m excited for Don Cunningham who organized the event,” Getzschman said. “It took quite a bit of planning.”

Getzschman said Cunningham and his wife, Nan, hand delivered the documentation for the sandwich to Guinness officials while on a vacation to London. The previous record holder was a 1,337-pound pork sandwich created by Moore’s Bar-B-Que in New Bern, N.C. (Via Omaha World Herald)

After London, Cunningham is also going to swing by Beirut to discuss the world’s largest dump that the town took after finishing the sandwich.

So is that the worst of the world record news for this week? You wish. Each week, I sort through this news out of my own personal fascination over what people will do for fame. And I fear I will never build immunity to the shock that each new week delivers. See for yourself after the jump.

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