Watercooler Stories

Young Taiwanese violinists claim record

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- A world record for the most people playing the violin together has been claimed by 4,645 elementary and junior high school students in Taiwan, organizers say.

Taiwan's Central News Agency said a Guinness World Records official from Britain was on hand for the record-setting event in central Taiwan's Changhua County Saturday. The previous record of 4,000 had been set in London back in 1925, the Taiwanese news agency said.

The young violinists played three musical pieces, including "Ode to Changhua," for 5 minutes, CNA said.

"Every student participating in the performance will obtain a certificate from the Guinness World Records as a testament to history," Changhua County Magistrate Cho Po-yuan said.

Man in Gumby suit: It wasn't a robbery

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- A 19-year-old man says he wore a Gumby suit in a San Diego 7-Eleven as a joke and never intended to rob the store.

Jacob Kiss, 19, told KGTV-San Diego he never used the words "robbery" or "gun" in the Labor Day incident, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Those never came out of my mouth," he said.

But the station reports the clerk at the store in the Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood told police the man in the Gumby suit threatened to pull out a gun unless the clerk gave him money.

KGTV said Kiss and the driver of a car he got into after leaving the store, Jason Giramma, 19, turned themselves in to San Diego police this week. Both were interviewed by police but not arrested.

The San Diego County district attorney will decide if criminal charges are filed, the station said.

A store surveillance camera shows Kiss trying to reach inside his Gumby suit, but he says he was reaching for his wallet to pay for cigarettes, not a gun.

Kiss says he likes donning the Gumby suit because it cheers people up.

But he doesn't recommend others go into stores wearing Gumby suits or gorilla suits or chicken suits.

LA woman boasts longest tongue

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- A Los Angeles woman can claim the distinction of having California's longest tongue -- nearly 4 inches from tip to lip, the Guinness Book of World Records says.

But Chanel Tapper's 3.8-inch tongue fell shy of the world record, held by Stephen Taylor of the United Kingdom, whose tongue measures 3.86 inches, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Another Southern Californian, Charlotte Lee of Huntington Beach, holds the record for most rubber ducks, Guinness says. Lee owns 5,249 of them and keeps them in glass showcases in a room just for the ducks.

And most cow-related items? Nobody has more than Denise Tabangui's 2,429 of them as of March 2011. The San Jacinto woman's pursuit of bovine-related stuff began after she spotted a cow figurine in her mother's kitchen in 1990.

Today, Tabangui's vast collection includes a life-sized cow. Her neighbors gave it to her as a gift.

W.R. "Rusty" Haight of San Diego can claim the distinction of being in more car collisions than anyone else. By 2003, the Times says, he had been in 718 collisions -- as a human crash-test dummy.

Mayor not surprised at cat's New York trip

NEW YORK, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was honored a Colorado cat who disappeared five years ago chose his city as a destination.

Bloomberg said Willow, the cat found in Manhattan last week and identified as a feline missing five years ago from the home of Jamie Squires in Boulder, Colo., has good taste in cities, the New York Daily News reported Friday.

"What I think it does show is how everybody in the end wants to come and live in New York," Bloomberg said Thursday.

Squires said her family is planning a New York trip to retrieve the cat as soon as the feline passes the required health screenings to be allowed to fly across state lines.