Vancouver is home to many world records.
That may not be the biggest surprise, given the size of the city, the innovation that happens here, and the fact Guinness World Records are owned by the Jim Pattison Group.
In fact, there's at least one world record that's likely very personal to Pattison, as his long time administrative assistant currently holds the records for "longest career as administrative assistant to the same person (female)." Congratulations to Maureen Chant.
The city itself holds a couple as well, including the Guinness World Record for largest city to hold the Winter Olympics. Perhaps that one needs to be updated given Beijing hosted in 2022.
Here are five other Guinness World Records set in Vancouver that you may not be aware of.
1. Fastest time to eat a vegetarian burger
This one was set quite recently, thought there are few details about it.
It took a man named Andy Smith just under two minutes (1:59:66 to be exact) to wolf down a veggie burger on March 3, 2024.
"Andy had participated in another person's Guinness World Records attempt and thought it would be fun to try his own," according to the world record keepers.
2. Longest Robot Snake
The Titanoboa Robot was created a few years ago by the eatART foundation, an organization that focused on energy awareness through art.
Stretching 50 ft long, it actually matched the length of the real life (though long extinct) titanoboa.
And yes, at one point a saddle was put on it.
3. First robotic surgery
In 1983 Arthrobot was created, the first surgical robot. And, fittingly, it participated in the first robotic surgery.
Its role was more of assistant, as it helped hand the human surgeon, Dr. Brian Day, tools and positioned the patient through voice commands.
While that may not seem as impressive by today's standards, it was a technological breakthrough; for context the film Tron had just come out the year before and the original Nintendo system was just being released in Japan.
4. Largest collection of sunglasses
This one is pretty straightforward.
In June of 2019 Lori-Ann Keenan was officially recognized as having the largest collection of sunglasses, totalling 2,174 at the time.
The reasoning was simple as well. She'd made a bucket list, and number 133 was "be in the Guinness World Book of Records."
5. Fastest time to travel to all Vancouver SkyTrain stations
In this case it's not unusual that Vancouver is involved in the record, it's more unusual that it's in any record book.
But in 2018 Stephen Quinlan was confirmed to hold the very specific record, at 2:49:37, passing through every SkyTrain station that's part of the system.
However, it may not stand long as someone on Reddit has announced they beat it.
With a file from Elisa Seeber.
