Articles labeled: world record

Oh, we forgot to mention he blows them up with his nose.

The Blaine, Washington boy is hoping to officially get into the Guinness Book of World Records after blowing up balloons using only his nose. [Andrew] Dahl put the inflatables to one nostril at a time and proceeded to expel air into 213 of them, blowing them up to the required 20 centimetres, the minimum allowed for the record.

He did it in the requisite time of 60 minutes at the local library, while his mother kept careful track. “Does this count as practicing my trumpet?” he asked his mom at one point during the Herculean effort. His mother’s answer: “Only if you can play that with your nose.”

This was a real family affair, with his dad carefully measuring every balloon to ensure it was the right size.

Vicki Van Meter set a record back in the ’90s for being the youngest pilot to fly a plane across the United States — she was only 11 years old at the time. She improved on that feat when she was 12, flying a plane from the United States to Europe. But this amazing kid apparently grew up to be a depressed young woman. Van Meter was found dead last Saturday, with the cause of death presumably suicide:

Van Meter died Saturday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Crawford County coroner said. Her body was found in her Meadville, Pennsylvania, home on Sunday.

Her brother said she battled depression, but her family thought she had been dealing with her problems.

“She was unhappy, but it was hard for her to open up about that, and we all thought that she was coping,” Daniel Van Meter said. He said she had opposed taking medication.

Van Meter was celebrated in 1993 and 1994 when she made her cross-country and trans-Atlantic flights accompanied by only a flight instructor. Her instructors said she was at the controls during the entirety of both trips.

“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything,” Van Meter said before her second trip. In her teens, she said she hoped to become an astronaut when she grew up.