There are all sorts of people doing all sorts of odd things in order to set world records, but I have to admit this guy from Queensland, Australia, is one of the strangest I’ve come across!
Back in 1998, Les Stewart completed 16 years hard work. As ‘therapy’ after sickness meant he had to give up his job as a typing instructor for the police force, he set himself a task. He decided to manually type all whole numbers (in words!) from one to one million.
Over the years, he typed two to three pages as day using in the process a total of seven manual typewriters, 1000 ink ribbons, and 19,890 pieces of paper. There’s no information available on his marital status.
To be honest I simply can’t understand the mindset of someone who can continue to carry out such a boring repetitive task… and especially not over such a long period! From my perspective he’d have been far better ’employed’ writing a detailed diary of his life, mundane as it might appear. After all at least that *might* have been of use to future sociologists and the like. Anything would have been better than such a monumentally complete and total waste of time!!
On a theme, Les was also the Australian Record holder for treading water, and also for swimming continuously for 30 hours. I’ve no idea what Les has been doing from over the past ten years, but I sincerely hope he’s not set himself the task of typing the same numbers in reverse order! Perhaps he’s combining the two and trying to type under water? Still… if nothing else I suppose he *has* ensured his place in the record books, even if it might for holding one of the silliest records ever!!
The Eclectic Interweb 