We hear about people being burned at the stake, frozen, and crushed with unbelievable amounts of outside force. But what really happens to the human body when it’s subjected to such extremes?

10Acceleration

G-forces never really affected humans until as late as the World War I, when pilots began mysteriously losing consciousness mid-flight. Thanks to US Air Force officer John Stapp, we then learned a lot more about how g-forces hit the human body, and the research took some serious dedication to the cause.

Stapp subjected himself to forces of up to 35 g, which is the equivalent of accelerating at 343 meters per second squared (1,125 ft/s²). His bones cracked and broke, and his dental fillings flew out. But the real effect, he determined, was on his blood.

When acceleration happens along a horizontal axis, the body tolerates the g-forces comparatively well because blood flow stays on that same horizontal plane. When g-forces act on the body in a vertical manner, things don’t go so well. Beyond a certain level (about 4 or 5 g for most people), our systems just don’t have enough strength to pump blood, and it all draws down to our lower extremities.

Negative g-forces cause the same problems, interfering with blood flow and making too much blood accumulate very quickly in one place. That’s where g-force suits come in. Air bladders in the suits expand with enough force to keep the blood where it belongs, preventing pilots from losing consciousness.

Stapp survived a final run in which he accelerated to 1,017 kilometers (632 mi) per hour, stopped in one second, and weighed more than 3,500 kilograms (7,700 lb) for a brief moment. He ultimately died peacefully at home at the age of 89.

9Pressure

Decompression sickness, commonly known as “the bends,” happens when the human body feels a sudden drop in surrounding pressure. Blood can no longer efficiently dissolve gases like nitrogen. Instead, the gases remain in the bloodstream as bubbles. In severe cases, the bubbles accumulate in blood vessels and block flow, resulting in dizziness, confusion, or even death.

The milder form of decompression sickness, DCS I, usually results in joint pain and tissue swelling. Divers who subject themselves to pressure changes on a regular basis can build up an undetected case of the bends that leads to permanent joint damage. DCS II is the type that can kill. Those stricken by this type experience conditions such as vertigo, paralysis, and shock.

8Cold

When the body’s temperature drops to about 30 degrees Celsius (86 °F), all bodily functions slow down. Fatigue, clumsiness, and a delay in reacting to outside stimuli are among the first symptoms.

One of the first systems to fail around the 30-degree mark is thermoregulation, or the body’s ability to maintain its core temperature on its own. The heart will also gradually slow, along with lung function, until the rest of the body starves of oxygen. In addition, the renal system quickly fails, flooding the body with a diluted version of urine. This substance leaks into the blood and organs, causing shock or other heart problems.

The reduced metabolism and decreased demand on the body’s systems enables some people to survive extreme cases of hypothermia and recover completely when properly warmed.

7Heat

Heatstroke happens when the body’s internal temperature rises above 40 degrees Celsius (104 °F). Classic heatstroke develops slowly with exposure to heat, such as during a summer heat wave. Exertional heatstroke hits people who perform highly physical tasks in hot conditions, such as industrial workers and athletes. With either type, only about 20 percent of sufferers survive without treatment, and many who do survive suffer some degree of brain damage.

Humidity increases the chances of heatstroke by keeping sweat from evaporating, slowing the body’s ability to rid itself of heat. Once the core temperature reaches 42 degrees Celsius (107 °F) for as little as 45 minutes, cells break down. Tissues swell, and the digestive lining weakens, allowing new toxins into the body. In milder cases, called heat exhaustion, only the circulatory system slows. With full heatstroke, however, the nervous system malfunctions as well, causing confusion, convulsions, and dizziness.

6Fire

Hot air and humidity can push the body to its limits. But fire, unsurprisingly, takes the body several steps further, through damage, death, and disintegration.

Researchers at the University of West Florida are setting fire to donated corpses to document just what happens to the body. The average human body burns for seven hours. The outer skin goes first, crisping and crackling before it burns away pretty quickly. The dermal layers of skin don’t last much longer, vanishing after about five minutes.

By then, the fire has burned away your shell and starts on the fat layer. Fat is an effective fuel as long as flammable material such as clothing or the wood of a pyre acts like a candle wick. Fat melts away, absorbs into the wick, and then burns for hours. Flames also dry out muscles, contracting them and making the body move.

The fire typically burns itself out when only bones remain, unless they break to expose the marrow. Teeth don’t burn, either.

The research mimicked the fires from crime scenes. During cremation, however, fires roar much hotter, and the body burns more quickly. Most cremation fires burn at 600–800 degrees Celsius (1,110–1,470°F). Yet even at these temperatures, it can take several hours to completely reduce the body to ash.

According to the researchers, a burning body smells exactly like pork ribs on the barbecue.

5Starvation

We all know starvation kills, but the specifics are especially horrifying. The stomach physically shrinks, which can make it uncomfortable to start eating normal amounts again even if food arrives to save you. The heart and heart muscles also physically shrink, restricting the amount they can do and dropping blood pressure. Prolonged starvation causes anemia. In women, menstruation can stop completely.

When your body lacks enough sugars to burn, it start breaking down fat. This might sound desirable enough, but when stored fat breaks down quickly, it releases compounds called ketones along with energy. Ketones build up, leading to nausea and exhaustion, not to mention bad breath.

Your bones may permanently weaken after temporary starvation. Perhaps more surprising is the permanent effect on the brain. Without vital nutrients like potassium and phosphorus, the brain malfunctions. You may physically lose gray matter in the brain—even if you resume eating, some of the loss is permanent, making the impaired brain function permanent as well.

Growing children and teens can suffer chronic health issues later in life, such as the inability for a woman to carry a baby to term. Perhaps most weirdly, people suffering from long-term starvation often grow a full coat of tiny, soft hairs called lanugo to help the body regulate temperature.

4Height

Even if you’re not afraid of heights, you’ve likely experienced a spinning, sick feeling when you look off the top of a skyscraper. This is vertigo, and it’s more than just psychological.

Balance is a tricky thing. When we’re on the ground, we orient ourselves using stationary, steady objects. When we’re at the top of a 30-story building, however, that doesn’t work. The nearest stationary object (besides the floor beneath your feet) is so far away that your body can’t use it to reassure itself that it, too, is stationary.

The building’s sway adds an additional problem. When you’re up high enough, everything sways slightly, and our bodies detect it even if our conscious minds can’t. The higher we get, the more the sway, and the harder for us to regulate our balance. If the effect becomes too great, it can interfere with our own center of gravity.

People bad at estimating distances suffer from more powerful acrophobia. A California State University study looked at how people estimated buildings’ heights. Those who overestimated the height of a building had stronger reactions to standing at the top. Findings suggest a direct link between perception and fear.

3Chemicals

Hydrogen sulfide is pretty nasty stuff. You know it as the smell of rotting eggs, and in high amounts, it may have killed off the dinosaurs and a huge portion of other prehistoric life. But all living things produce the chemical in very small amounts, and it helps regulate the rate at which our internal processes function. Most recently, it’s been found to have a new use—putting mice into a state of suspended animation.

When administered at the proper dose, hydrogen sulfide slows the body’s metabolic rate and drops the core temperature to well below the hypothermia threshold. All bodily functions, including circulation and pulmonary activity, almost shut down.

In animal tests, hydrogen sulfide suppresses normal body function, perhaps forming an invaluable tool in slowing the damage done by burns and illnesses until a person can receive proper treatment.

2Radiation

Radioactive decay releases energy into the immediate environment. That energy interacts with the cells of the body, either killing them outright or causing them to mutate. Mutations develop into cancer, and some types of radioactive material hit specific body parts especially hard. For example, radioactive iodine accumulates in the thyroid gland, causing thyroid cancer, especially in children.

It takes a relatively huge amount of radiation exposure to significantly increase a person’s risk of developing cancer. The standard person is exposed to between 0.24 and 0.3 rem of radiation in a year. For your risk of developing cancer to increase by 0.5 percent, you need about 10 rem.

At the much higher level of 200 rem, radiation sickness kicks in. Radiation sickness causes short-term, instant effects like vomiting, a reduction of red blood cells, and damage to bone marrow. This bone damage causes another, more latent problem—bone marrow is responsible for producing platelets, which are essential in blood clotting.

1Loneliness

Feeling lonely is normal. Even in the most crowded of rooms, we can still feel an overwhelming sense of loneliness if we connect with no one. But chronic loneliness can have a very real effect on our bodies.

According to University of Chicago psychologists, people who report being lonely show severely suppressed immune systems for an interesting reason. Since lonely people view the world as a dangerous, unfriendly place, their immune systems fixate on fighting bacterial infections. This leaves them unable to produce as many antiviral antibodies, leaving them consequently more susceptible to viral illnesses.

They are also more susceptible to high blood pressure, as hardened arteries have also been linked to chronic loneliness, and difficulty sleeping. Higher stress leaves the lonely more vulnerable to heart disease and strokes.

+Water

We all know the dangers of dehydration, but we hear less about the dangers of drinking water to excess.

Water intoxication causes all kinds of problems, the most deadly being hyponatremia. When the kidneys can’t get rid of the extra water, they push it into the bloodstream, where it dilutes the blood and causes a severe drop in electrolytes. Without enough salt in the body, you suffer from headaches, exhaustion, vomiting, and disorientation.

Once the bloodstream can no longer handle it, the water rushes into cells, which swell. This becomes deadly when the cells lack room for expansion, such as in the brain and spine. You can then suffer from brain swelling, coma, seizures, and ultimately death.

You may also run into another problem from drinking too much. Water can contain pollutants. When you regularly drink more water than the safely recommended amount (which is actually rather less than the long-touted eight glasses per day), the pollutants can build to a level with which the body can no longer cope.

Mankind often stretches the boundaries of preconceived norms with creations so extraordinary that they become more than the sum of their parts. The Eiffel Tower is a cultural icon of France and, although not warmly received at first, its beauty has since transfixed people the world over.

So it might come as a surprise to learn that, from 1925 to 1936, French automobile manufacturer Citroen essentially utilized this extraordinary structure for the mundane task of advertising their brand. In fact, the very thing that saved the Eiffel Tower from demolition was its role as a radiotelegraph communications tower in World War I, hardly a glamorous occupation for one of the most romanticized structures in the world.

Despite having a functional purpose, the Eiffel Tower still remains extraordinary, but what about things mankind has created that are ordinary, even mundane in their very creation and essence? Let’s take a look at 10 man-made things that are so extraordinary, they deserve to transcend their ordinary origins.

10The Niesenbahn Funicular Service Stairway

It would be fair to assume that the longest stairway in the word is in an extraordinarily tall building, but that title actually goes to the service stairway running alongside the Niesenbahn Funicular railway near Spiez, Switzerland. At 11,674 steps, it claims the Guinness World Record for longest staircase in the world. To put 11,674 steps into more relatable terms, the stairway covers a distance of 3.5 kilometers (2.2 mi) and rises 1,669 meters (5,476 ft) in elevation along that distance.

Before you enthusiastically venture out to conquer this Everest of stairways, you must first register to do so. It’s only open to workers, excluding the annual stairway run—in which you can pay to run on stairs for over an hour. Admittedly, that sounds terrible, but since it’s in Switzerland the views are probably gorgeous.

9The Cleveland Federal Reserve’s Vault Door

From its installation in 1923 to its retirement in 1996, the 1.5-meter-thick (5 ft) door at the Federal Reserve of Cleveland served as the largest vault door installation in the world. At a weight of 100 tons, the swinging section of the door alone is akin to the weight of a Boeing 757 before fueling and loading, and its 5.5-meter (18 ft) hinge adds an additional 47 tons to the total weight. Yet it’s so perfectly balanced that one person can open and shut it with ease.

The door is so large and heavy that, when the time came to transport it to Cleveland, Ohio from York, Pennsylvania, the largest railcar in the United States was required to carry it, and the route had to be carefully planned to avoid bridges, because the sheer weight of the cargo threatened to collapse anything that wasn’t solid Earth. Once the car arrived in Cleveland, it took two full days just to unload the door from the railcar. No crane existed that was strong enough to lift it, so massive hydraulic jacks were used instead. If that wasn’t enough, once unloaded from the railcar, it took a total of four days to travel from the rail station to the bank, a distance of merely 1.6 kilometers (1 mi).

8Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C

The world’s longest ship, Emma Maersk, is astounding in its own right, with a size comparable to the height of the world’s tallest skyscrapers at 397 meters (1,302 feet). It’s been the record holder for the world’s longest ship since 2007, but it’s the heart of this mighty beast that’s truly staggering. It’s befitting that the longest ship on the planet be powered by the largest reciprocating engine in the world—the Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C, an engine roughly the size of a small three-story apartment building.

Without getting too technical, an engine of this size generates 110,000 horsepower and weighs 2,500 tons; compare that to the average horsepower and weight of an automobile engine at 150 horsepower and 160 kilograms (350 lb). Despite being so immense, the Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C is incredibly efficient, but nonetheless it still consumes 39.5 barrels of fuel every hour and costs $46 a minute to run.

7The Delaware Aqueduct

Many of us reading this have the luxury of instant access to clean water in the comfort of our homes, but we usually don’t think of the unseen engineering marvels put in place so we can do something so simple as fill a glass of water. Most modern cites aren’t blessed with the foresight of the founders to settle near an adequate water supply, and New York City is one of them. Early settlers dug the first permanent well in 1677, and the first reservoir delivered water to 22,000 residents via hollow logs nearly 100 years later in 1776. Aqueducts became the solution to New York’s growing population and their increasing thirst all the way up until 1944, when the Delaware Aqueduct was constructed.

As of today, it still delivers 50 percent of the metropolis’s drinking water. At 137 kilometers (85 mi) long, it is the world’s longest continuous tunnel, and its deepest point lies 450 meters (1,500 ft) underground—nothing short of incredible, considering that it was constructed by drilling and blasting through solid rock. The aqueduct is also incredibly efficient—95 percent of its water is delivered by gravity alone, which is no small feat considering it delivers 1.9 billion liters (500 million gal) of water per day. Unfortunately, the fact that it leaks up to 130 million liters (35 million gal) of water daily—and has been since 1988—makes it one of New York’s biggest current problems. Plans are underway to spend $1.2 billion on diversion tunnels by 2019.

6KVLY-TV Television Mast

Before Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was built in 2010, the record for the world’s tallest man-made structure belonged to the KVLY-TV antenna in North Dakota. It took just 33 days and 11 men to assemble the antenna to a dizzying height of 628.8 meters (2,063 ft). The tower is so tall that if one of those 11 workers dropped his wrench at the top, it would be traveling at 400 kilometers per hour (250 mph) by the time it reached the ground—fast enough to ruin your day in a hurry if it happened to land on your toes.

If you’re feeling brave, there’s a small, two-man service elevator that takes you 594 meters (1,950 ft) up the tower, but the last 275 meters (900 ft) or so—the actual antenna—are only accessible by climbing. The gusts up there can reach 112 kilometers per hour (70 mph) and the tower sways up to 3 meters (10 ft), so maybe it’s best just to visit the Burj Khalifa’s air-conditioned observation deck instead.

5The Australian BHP Iron Ore Train

How would you like to be stuck behind a train that is 7.3 kilometers (4.6 mi) long? While it might not seem that impressive at first glance, know that the amount of cars in this record-breaking run was a staggering 682 cars with a combined weight approaching 100,000 tons, making it both the longest and heaviest train to ever move. This becomes even more impressive when you learn that the entire train was under the control of a single driver harnessing the power of eight massive General Electric Diesel locomotives spaced evenly throughout the train to increase traction and braking forces.

BHP Iron Ore is no stranger to long trains, however, and routinely operates trains at half this size, meaning that they are regularly the largest trains on the planet at any given time. If you ever find yourself blocked at a railroad crossing by one of these beasts, it might be best to just head back the way you came.

4The Luxor Sky Beam

No matter how common lightbulbs are these days, it’s hard to overlook the light mounted on top of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. This light is the second brightest man-made light in the world. While its setting is anything but ordinary, there’s no trickery or magic behind the “sky beam,” as it’s called in Las Vegas. It uses 39 xenon-powered lamps and the aid of simple reflector shields. Granted, these aren’t your average consumer-grade lightbulbs, as each one costs a hefty $1,200 and uses 7,000 watts. When combined as a unit, they make 40 billion candlepower. It’s so bright that it has reportedly been seen at night by airline pilots 430 kilometers (270 mi) away in Los Angeles, and the air temperature around the lamps reaches 260 degrees Celsius (500 °F).

This might sound impressive, but the world’s brightest light used to be even brighter when it was first installed in the 1990s. The hotel once claimed that American astronaut Daniel Brandenstein remarked that the light was so bright that it would awaken his comrades on the space shuttle. While that story was revealed to be a hoax, the Luxor sky beam is still powerful enough to use as a navigational landmark, as more than a few Las Vegas residents have admitted to doing.

3Large European Acoustic Facility

The Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF) is so loud it can kill you. Glossing over how the scientists behind it found that out, let’s try to put one of the world’s most powerful artificial sound systems in more relatable terms. At its base, the LEAF isn’t much more than a juiced-up sound system pumping sound waves into an acoustically optimized room, similar to a loud stereo system playing into a hard-walled closet. The only difference is, the room is 15 meters (50 ft) tall and the system is fueled by nitrogen to produce sounds just 40 decibels quieter than a TNT bomb.

The device is used to test whether satellites and other electronics can withstand the decibels produced at takeoff. As some of the loudest man-made sounds on the planet, rocket blasts sometimes damage the sensitive equipment being launched into space. And yes, the LEAF can kill you—because of this, the designers engineered a fail-safe that doesn’t allow the system to be turned on unless the door is closed.

2The Aerium

Businesses fail all the time, and the more ambitious ones usually leave behind large facilities in their wake. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to sell a standard office building than it is to sell, say, an aircraft hangar 210 meters (688 ft) wide and 107 meters (350 ft) high. That’s the predicament German airship company CargoLifter AG found itself in in 2002 when they declared insolvency. Fortunately for tourists in Europe, the Malaysian company Tanjong had the extravagant plan to convert the world’s largest freestanding building into an indoor water park and resort.

The result is nothing short of astounding. While the structure is nothing more than a clever aircraft hangar, and the resort is standard fare for tourists and business moguls alike, the two combine to create one of the most fascinatingly odd man-made attractions in the world. Just how big is the world’s largest freestanding building? The Aerium can fit the Statue of Liberty standing up or the Eiffel Tower lying on its side; the floor space alone can fit eight American football fields. With all that space available, it’s barely surprising to learn that it holds a 2,700-square-meter (9,000 sq ft) pool with 180 meters (600 ft) of sandy shoreline. It also contains the world’s largest indoor rainforest with 50,000 trees.

1SEA-ME-WE-3

Submarine telecommunication cables are the unsung heroes when it comes to connecting the world. It seems that in our modern age of increasingly advanced technology and rapid development, the majority of communications would be delivered via satellites, but the reality is that most of our data circumnavigates the globe the same way our computers connected to the Internet 10 years ago—with really long cables. Most people don’t even know they exist, and SEA-ME-WE-3 is the world’s longest at a staggering 39,000 kilometers (24,233 mi). Completed in 2000, the cable runs from England to Australia and has 39 landing points in 33 countries and four continents.

What’s even more incredible than the sheer scale is how mundane and simple these cables are. Modern submarine fiber optic cables like SEA-ME-WE-3 are little more than 6.8 centimeters (2.7 in) in diameter, which accounts for a rubber shell, protective synthetic bedding, copper insulation, and the optical fibers themselves. The difference between your household Ethernet cords and submarine fiber optic cables isn’t that great in principle, and everyone who’s had a data cord break on them knows how frustrating it can be. As it turns out, this exact thing can happen to data cables as well.

A miscalculation by a ship’s navigator or even a curious sea creature can sever a cable, resulting in millions of users without Internet access. Even the mighty SEA-ME-WE-3 isn’t immune to the risks—this exact thing happened in 2005, resulting in Pakistan essentially being isolated from the rest of the world for weeks.

Patrick Fuller is a university student studying industrial design who is fascinated by incredible man-made things.

Biggest, smallest, oldest, tallest. Only relatively recently have we begun reliably recording the limits of what human beings can be, do or endure. Many marks are impressive, some concerning, still others just plain freaky.

Here are ten current titleholders who, when necessary, are compared to all-time records held by someone no longer living.

Top 10 Human Sideshow Freaks

10 Oldest

The oldest verified human life belonged to Jeanne Calment of France, who was born on February 21, 1875. By the time she died in August 1997, she’d existed for 122 years and 164 days. Remarkably, she lived her final 34 years with no heirs, her only daughter having died of a lung infection in 1934, and her grandson in a car accident in 1963.

Calment was the super-est of an evolutionarily exclusive subset called supercentenarians, which defines people who live to 110. Less than 2,000 such individuals have been documented. Unsurprisingly, they often make headlines in both life and death; in April 2017 the passing of 117-year-old Emma Morano was widely reported, as she’d been the last living person born in the 19th Century.

Currently, the world’s oldest person is 118-year-old Kane Tanaka of Japan. Notably, Ms. Tanaka has already bested her countryman, Jiroemon Kimura, whose lifespan of 116 years and 54 days makes him the longest-living man ever. One aspect of her biography seems mathematically impossible: Tanaka was married for 71 years when her husband, Hideo, passed away… and that was TWENTY-EIGHT years ago.

Fifteen years ago, at age 103, Tanaka beat colorectal cancer, because why not. This May, she cancelled plans to participate in the Olympic torch relay across her homeland – but only out of health-related concern for her fellow nursing home residents. Tanaka is the third oldest person ever recorded. If she survives until late June of 2025, she’ll become the longevity recordholder.

9 Fattest

I know: Of course it’s an American. U-S-A! U-S-A!

The heaviest person ever recorded was Jon Brower Minnoch of Seattle, Washington, who once weighed a whopping 1,400 pounds. Minnoch was always… um, let’s say “husky.” By age 12, he was nearly 300 pounds. Ten years later, he weighed 500. Obesity that extreme is rarely the result of diet alone: Minnoch suffered from generalized edema, a condition in which the body accumulates excess extracellular fluid. As much as half of Minnoch’s weight was irregularly retained fluids.

At age 36, Minnoch married a 110-pound woman; together, they set the record for largest weight difference for a married couple ever, which shouldn’t be a thing. Minnoch died in 1983, at 41.

The second heaviest person ever recorded, Khalid bin Mohsen Shaari of Saudi Arabia, has a happier ending, insomuch as he’s since shed his heavyweight title. In fact, he lays claim to another record: the largest weight loss in human history. Over four years, Shaari lost nearly TWELVE HUNDRED POUNDS, and today is a healthy 150.

Shaari’s successor, Juan Pedro Franco of Mexico, fortunately followed suit. Topping out at 1,312 pounds, Franco dropped nearly 900 pounds to relinquish his titanium-reinforced throne. The dramatic dieting was well-timed, because he recently caught a bout of the coronavirus.

Currently, the “world’s heaviest human” category is officially vacant, though four other people known to have weighed at least 1,000 pounds remain alive. Three are (what else?) Americans.

8 Tallest

NINE feet tall? Well, almost. While stories abound of people eclipsing that remarkable mark, the tallest person ever irrefutably measured was American Robert Wadlow, who stretched to a gangly 8 feet, 11.1 inches. Born in 1918, Wadlow’s height was off the charts from the get-go. By age 5, he was a shocking 5 feet, 4 inches; by 8, he was scraping 6 feet.

Unfortunately, this was neither normal nor sustainable. Wadlow’s record-setting length was caused by pituitary gland hyperplasia, which leads to runaway production of human growth hormone. No viable treatment existed in the 1930s. Wadlow passed away of sepsis in 1940 at just 22, after a leg brace worn due his massive height caused a severe infection.

Currently, the first person in the world to realize it’s raining is 38-year-old Turkish farmer Sultan Kösen. In 2009, Kösen became the first in over 20 years to officially eclipse 8 feet tall; today he is 8 feet, 2.8 inches. He has the longest hands (11.22 inches) of any living person, and the second-longest feet (14 inches).

The cause of Kösen’s exceptional height is a pituitary tumor. Fortunately, in 2010 he received radiation treatment that successfully halted his unsustainable growth. Here he is making average size things look tiny.

Notably, per the next entry, Kösen once met his record-setting counterpart…

7 Shortest

In November 2014, tallest living man Sultan Kösen of Turkey met the shortest living man – in fact, the shortest person in recorded history. The visual was… um, unsettling actually.

Born in Nepal in 1939, Chandra Bahadur Dangi never really grew up – he just got older. Due to the remoteness of his hometown – Dangi lived in the isolated village of Reemkholi, some 250 miles from Kathmandu – his disturbingly diminutive stature wasn’t officially recognized until 2012.

A primordial dwarf, which sounds badass but doesn’t seem fun IRL, Dangi was exceptionally tiny from birth. His peak height was an astounding 1 foot, 9½ inches, half an inch shorter than the previous recordholder. Unfortunately, his claim to shortest man alive was, well, short-lived. Dangi died in 2015, at age 75.

Dangi’s death passed the tiny torch to Junrey Balawing of the Philippines… until the 23.6-inch man passed away last year. Today, the shortest living man is Lin Yü-chih of Taiwan, who at 2 feet, 2.6 inches towers over his predecessors.

Lin Yü-chih is not, however, the shortest person alive. That honor goes to Jyoti Amge, a 27-year-old woman from India. At 2 feet, 0.7 inches tall, Amge is the third shortest woman in recorded history. In 2014, she appeared in the refreshingly un-woke “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” as a character called Ma Petite – though it was, literally, just a small role.

6 Fastest

This might be the list’s only guessable answer: Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt has the fastest sprint ever recorded.

Or, rather, sprints – with an s: Bolt holds the record in the 100 meters (9.58 seconds) AND 200 meters (19.19 seconds). He maxed out at 27.8 miles per hour – the fastest speed ever achieved by a human, and faster than most dogs (not Greyhounds, of course, who can reach 45mph.)

Even more impressive than Bolt’s sheer speed is its longevity. In a sport whose uber-peak performance typically means brief careers, many still consider Bolt the current fastest person on Earth despite setting his records 12 years ago – and despite retiring in 2017. Their reasoning is twofold. First, Bolt is the only sprinter to win 100-meter and 200-meter titles at three consecutive Olympics, starting in 2008.

Secondly, current sprinters aren’t approaching Bolt’s times. The favorite entering the current Olympic Games, American Trayvon Bromell, boasts a top time of 9.77 seconds – nearly two-tenths of a second off Bolt’s pace in a sport where two-tenths of a second is a lifetime. Ultimately, Lamont Jacobs of Italy took gold, with a time of 9.8 seconds. Were Bolt to get back in peak shape and return, he might very well reclaim his throne – even at the ripe old age of 34.

5 Smartest (Highest IQ)

Let’s set some guardrails around this entry, because “smartness” has too many variables to be objectively quantified. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is undoubtedly exceptionally smart… but exceptionally awful at anticipating consequences, reacting to real-time problems and, especially, optics.

But in terms of sheer intellect, IQ is the best, albeit imperfect, measurement of smartness. And though he never took a formal test, experts place the IQ of American William Sidis between 250 and 300 – an incredible 50-100 points higher than Albert Einstein. Sidis was reading newspapers before age 2 and, by 6, spoke Latin, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian in addition to his native English. He entered Harvard University at 11.

Sidis’ adulthood, however, was far less remarkable. Tired of the attention and expectations tied to his wunderkind status, Sidis receded from the limelight and became a reclusive writer – so reclusive, in fact, that he published most of his books under pseudonyms. He died from a brain hemorrhage at age 46.

So who’s the smartest now? Well, it’s complicated. In the 1980s, American Marilyn vos Savant registered a 228… so incredible, in fact, that Guinness eliminated the “Highest IQ” category shortly thereafter. Currently, the top-ranked person in the World Genius Directory is chess player Konstantinos Ntalachanis, who has scored as high as 230 on IQ tests.

4 Hairiest

Larry Gomez of Mexico has a rare genetic disorder known as Congenital Generalized Hypertrichosis, which affects less than 100 people in the world. As a result, he has hair covering an unbelievable 98 percent of his body. Apparently less than 10 people in the world have hair covering at least 95% of their bodies, and lucky Larry is the wooliest mammal.

His nickname? Why, “Wolf Man,” of course. And along with his hair, the plot gets thicker – because Larry isn’t a lone wolf. His wolfpack holds the Guinness record for Hairiest Large Family, which shouldn’t be a thing. Seen here with Gabriel “Danny” Ramos Gomez, Luisa Lilia De Lira Aceves and Jesus Manuel Fajardo Aceves, Larry and his kin are among 19 family members spanning five generations with Hypertrichosis. Larry and Danny perform in the Mexican National Circus, probably to cover their shampoo expenses.

Hypertrichosis has an even rarer sub-disease called Ambras Syndrome, which claims only about 50 confirmed cases since the Middle Ages. One sufferer is Thailand native Supatra Susuphan. By age 11, she’d already been deemed the world’s hairiest girl. Her nicknames have included Wolf Girl, Monkey Face and Chewbacca, who is probably the worst Star Wars character to resemble besides maybe Jabba the Hutt.

But alas, this saga has a happy ending: In 2018 Susuphan got married. As of this writing, the couple was still living hairily ever after.

3 Wokest

Um… some ugly college kid on Twitter perhaps?

Just kidding. This entry isn’t about PC woke, but rather physically woke – as in not asleep. While it’s likely that someone – chronic insomniac, tortured prisoner of war, anyone who’s coached the New York Jets – has gone sleepless for longer stretches, the official record for consecutive wakefulness belongs to American Randy Gardner.

For a school science experiment to see how long he could stay awake, Gardner, then 17, went an amazing 264 hours – just over 11 days – without sleep, eclipsing the existing record by four hours. He and classmate Bruce McAllister purposely intended to surpass the 260-hour mark, which belonged to Hawaiian disc jockey Tom Rounds, who’d gained notoriety for setting the record while sitting in a department store display window.

Gardner’s record-setting stint started innocently enough – just he and McAllister. But when it became clear Gardner was literally up for the challenge, the two were joined by sleep researcher Dr. William Dement and U.S. Navy medic John Ross.

By day three, Gardner became noticeably uncoordinated, and experienced strong mood swings. After five days, hallucinations began. Incredibly, after finally tapping out, Gardner went not to bed but to a press conference. He was then given an electroencephalogram to study his brainwaves before hitting the sack for a solid 14 hours of sleep. Gardner is still alive.

2 Wettest

This list’s newest record belongs to Pablo Fernandez of Spain, who from July 19-20 of 2021 broke the record for longest distance swim. Departing at 10am, Fernandez swam for 250km (155.3 miles) over 26 hours and 36 minutes.

Fernandez, though, had some help: an incredibly friendly current. According to Robert Strauss, the attempt’s chief observer, “The currents were going so fast. We calculated that Pablo was swimming 100 meters approximately every 40 seconds for 24 hours. He was flying.” By comparison, Olympic male sprint swimmers typically take 46 or 47 seconds to swim 100 meters.

Still, Fernandez is no splash in the pan – he actually holds several water endurance records. In 2019, he became the fastest to swim 5km with leg irons on, which is a really, really specific world record but sure, why not. In 2020, he broke the record for swimming in place when he tread water for 25 consecutive hours.

On the women’s side, the recordholder for an unassisted open-water swim is Australian Chloe McCardel, who in 2014 swam 77.3 miles in the Atlantic Ocean over a span of about 41 hours.

While impressive, McCardel was 29 at the time – peak physical shape. At least as impressive was 64-year-old Diana Nyad’s 110-mile, 53-hour swim from Cuba to Florida in 2013, which was considered “assisted” (and therefore not superior to McCardel’s mark) only because she used gear to protect from dangerous jellyfish stings, which had stalled her previous efforts.

1 Drunkest

A certain subset of the population – alcoholics – think your stories about how many beers you once drank are just adorable. People bragging to us about their ability to hold liquor is like boasting about sexual exploits to Ron Jeremy. Amateurs.

Still, this one guy did some epic damage. After a car accident causing him severe injuries, an unnamed man in Poland had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 1.480%. For perspective, the limit to legally drive in the US, Canada and UK is 0.08%. Other locales, including the EU and Australia, deem anything over 0.05% too inebriated to drive.

That means our Polish friend’s BAC was, depending on the comparison country, approaching either 20 or 30 times the legally drunk standard. It is the highest BAC ever recorded in known history – a mark that, per this Blood Alcohol Content Calculator, would take a 150-pound adult male approximately NINETY ounces of vodka to reach.

Amazingly, according to doctors, the man survived his binge drinking episode… but eventually succumbed to injuries from the car wreck, because pavement.

Due to medical record anonymity, it’s impossible to know who the current BAC titleholder is, but the next highest seem to be a South African sheep thief (yes, sheep thief) who clocked a 1.41% in 2010, and a 24-year-old American woman who, despite a BAC of 1.33% – the highest ever recorded for a female – was somehow “alert and capable.” I think I’m in love.

Top 10 Extraordinary Human Abilities