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Showing posts with label World Most. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World Most. Show all posts

Most Miles Travelled by a Passenger World Record by Fred Finn

Imagine if you had the airmiles of record-breaking traveller Fred Finn...

He has visited 139 different countries, clocking up 15 million miles - the equivalent of 31 trips to the Moon and back. And he now holds the official world record for most miles travelled by a passenger.

Fred, 70, went on 718 Concorde flights and keeps a detailed log of every journey - each one countersigned by the pilot or driver.

Even though there are still 57 nations Fred has yet to visit, there is only one place left on his holiday wish list.

He said yesterday: "Seeing as I've travelled to most of the Earth, I'd now like to explore the Moon."

Fred was born in Exmouth, Devon, and caught the travel bug at 18 when he took his first flight from an airfield in Hampshire to New York.

The retired international licence manager now lives with wife Alla, 35, in the Ukrainian city of Komsomolsk.

He reckons his total travel bill tops £2million, but most of the journeys have been for work.

On his travels Fred met former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney, singer Dolly Parton and had dinner in New York with Johnny Cash.

Fred once made three Concorde trips in one day and always sat in seat 9a. He said: "I soon realised that was the one they started serving food and drink from."

He reckons he has flown across the Atlantic more than 2,000 times and visited Africa on 600 occasions.

His favourite place is Kenya and he likes Nigeria the least because it's "lawless".

FRED'S TRAVEL TIPS:

Set your watch to local time when you step off the plane and eat at that country's meal times.

Use hard suitcases to avoid breakages.

Drink water to avoid jet lag.

Always take contact numbers for your family.

Use a travel adaptor that fits all plugs.

FRED FINN'S TRAVEL LOG:

1953 Went on a school trip to Holland, Belgium and France.

1958 First flight to the USA via Scotland and Iceland. He also visited Venezuela, Brazil and Germany.

1959 Italy, Egypt, Ceylon, Australia, Yemen, Madeira, South Africa and the Canaries.

1960 Canada.

1961 Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

1962-63 Back to the USA and Canada again.

1964 Spent nine years travelling from his home in Exmouth to every state in the USA. Also boarded weekly flights between London and New York.

1973 Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

1974-75 Italy, Austria, Portugal, Spain and Malta.

1976-78 Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Slovakia, Greece, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Poland.

1979-81 Iceland, Switzerland Monaco, Moldova, Ukraine, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Yemen.

1982-83 Ethiopia , Eritrea, Sudan, Malawi, Botswana, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Morocco.

1984-86 Ireland,Seychelles, Mauritius, Guatemala and Cameroon.

1987-88 Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.

1989-93 Jamaica, Trinidad, Bahamas, Barbados, USA, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Kenya, Thailand and Malaysia.

1994-96 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Singapore.

1997-99 Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Bermuda and Indonesia.

2000-02 Uganda, Gabon, Zambia and Luxembourg.

2003 -PRESENT DAY Niger, Burkina Faso, Benin, Dominica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jordan, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Qatar and Afghanistan.

MIAMI 1989

KENYA 1992

CONCORDE 2003

Most Number of Guinness World Records Holder - Ashrita Furman

He holds 122 Guinness World Records – and one of them is the official record for holding the most world records - New Yorker Ashrita Furman doesn’t pass up the chance of breaking a world record, no matter what he has to do.

Furman has walked 80 miles with a milk bottle balanced on his head,
performed 9,628 sit-ups in an hour, balanced a 93-pound stack of milk crates on his chin, and balanced 700 eggs on end simultaneously, reports The Sun.

His other feats include hula hooping for the fastest mile at Ayers Rock in Australia and completing the fastest mile on a pogo stick in Antarctica.

Born Keith Furman, he grew up obsessed with his yearly copy of the Guinness Book of World Records. At 15, he discovered yoga and meditation.

“I could make progress in every field if I meditated - in sports, mental agility, everything. I realised it wasn''t my body but my spirit that got me through - I could achieve anything if I put my mind to it. After that I knew I could achieve my childhood dream of breaking a Guinness World Record,” he said.

Furman broke his first record in 1979 performing 27,000 star jumps. And it was too much fun to stop. In 1986, he set the record for underwater pogo stick jumping and introduced it on US TV show Good Morning America on April Fool's Day.

That same year he began setting records at historic landmarks by doing forward rolls along the entire 12¼ mile route of Paul Revere''s Ride in Massachusetts and jumping 11½ miles up and down the foothills of Mount Fuji in Japan on a pogo stick.

"I think those are two of my favourite records," he recalled. Furman admitted his record breaking has become an obsession. "I would stay up until two or three in the morning, sifting through the 40,000 records on file for ones I had a shot at breaking - I came up with a list of about 1000,” he confessed.

"I've broken over 350 records in my life and it hurts when somebody breaks mine but I just think, 'Right, what would it take for me to win that one back?"

"I am always looking for the next challenge so I often train for about four or five records at once. There is no goal number in my head now, but lately I've been breaking about 50 records a year," Furman added.

So will he ever stop?

"Why would I when I'm having so much fun? Whether it's hopscotch, skipping ropes or hula hoops, I get to be a big kid every day. When it stops being fun, I'll stop. But until then there is always a new challenge to face, always another mountain to climb - I want to try Mt Fuji on stilts next!"

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