Ashrita Furman: The Guinness World Record King

Here’s a man you might or might not have heard about. Ashrita Furman. Born as Keith Furman in New York, 55 years ago in 1954, this man is one of the few men you will see that can stun you. Yes, Ashrita can be called the King of The Guinness World Records because he holds 100 world records at the moment, the most held by any individual at the same time.

The Guinness world records held a special place in this man’s heart throughout his childhood. He was inspired by the people he knew about in the world records and felt that he belonged there too. Unfortunately, he was not the most athletic and as a result, he believed that having a world record to his name would be a dream gone out of control. Come 2009 and now he holds 100 records currently and has set 236 since 1979. 30 years since he made his first official record of 27,000 jumping jacks in New York, Ashrita has been strong throughout.

So what is this sudden spark that makes him master some of the most physically gruelling tasks? As a teenager, Ashrita started to find that Eastern spirituality interested him. So under the guidance of Sri Chinmoy, Ashrita started to get in touch with his inner spirit through Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy of self-transcendence. This positive energy that he accumulated now makes him successful in every athletic task he takes on.

You’ve got to give it up to this man. Okay, you might be a bit sceptical about him, especially if you haven’t heard of him. You might go, so what exactly are his records? You’ve got a point. This man has many records and out of the 236 he’s set, he still holds 100. The rest have been beaten by himself, by someone else or the category no longer exists. His records start from the laudable poetry reading by a group, where Sri Chinmoy’s poem ‘Precious’ was translated into 111 languages and recited, which earned him his place of holding 100 records at a time. The records then continue to a myriad of strange tasks like eating the most M&M’s in a minute using chopsticks. If you take a look at his records here, you may think, these records are very strange. Some of them are garlic eating (the most cloves in a minute), most number of T-shirts torn in half in a minute, most number of grapes caught in 3 minutes by the mouth when thrown from 15 feet above the ground and the most number of jumps on a pogo stick in a minute. Yes, these tasks go from the absolutely wild to the downright bizarre but before you say that this man only makes his name through silly tasks, take a while to applaud him for actually thinking of these tasks before practising to attempt a Guinness world record in them.

Ashrita Furman is truly the master of the weird and wonderful and this man has some grit to continue making world records at the ripe age of 55. He describes himself on his website as Mr. Versatility and indeed, he truly lives up to the name. There really is no stopping this king of the Guinness world records.