The heaviest man was 63 times heavier than the heaviest baby, although only half the weight of the heaviest carnivore on land. But is the heaviest bell heavier than the heaviest tank? And can anything on Earth outweigh a blue whale? GWR has the answers.
Chisato Iwasaki (JPN) grew an apple weighing 1.849 kg (4 lb 1 oz) at his apple farm in Hirosaki City, Japan, on 24 Oct 2005.
“Trichobezoar” is the medical name for a hairball, which occurs as a result of trichophagia – eating one’s own hair. The largest trichobezoar surgically removed from a human was a hairball weighing 4.5 kg (10 lb), found in the stomach of an unnamed 18-year-old woman treated at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in Nov 2007. The excised trichobezoar measured 37.5 x 17.5 x 17.5 cm (15 x 7 x 7 in).
Giantess Anna Bates (née Swan, CAN) measured 7 ft 11 in (241.3 cm). On 19 Jan 1879, she gave birth to a boy weighing 22 lb (9.98 kg) and measuring 28 in (71.12 cm) at her home in Seville, Ohio, USA.
The kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) is found in South and East Africa. The heaviest recorded specimen was a male that weighed 40 lb (18.1 kg). It was shot in South Africa by big-game hunter H T Glynn in 1936. He later presented its head and neck to the British Museum in London, UK.
Ruan Liangming (CHN) wore a 63.7-kg (140-lb 6.95-oz) mantle of bees in Fengxin County, Yichun City, Jiangxi Province, China, on 15 May 2014. An estimated 637,000 bees made up the mantle, including 60 queens.
Sumo wrestler Sharran Alexander (UK) weighed 203.21 kg (448 lb) on 15 Dec 2011.
A Galápagos tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra) named Goliath measured 135.8 cm (4 ft 5 in) long, 102 cm (3 ft 4 in) wide, 68.5 cm (2 ft 3 in) high, and weighed 417 kg (920 lb) at his heaviest. Goliath lived at the Life Fellowship Bird Sanctuary in Seffner, Florida, USA, from 1960 to 2002.
Jon Brower Minnoch (USA, 1941–83) had suffered from obesity since childhood. He was 6 ft 1 in (185 cm) tall and weighed 392 lb (178 kg; 28 st) in 1963, rising to 700 lb (317 kg; 50 st) in 1966 and 975 lb (442 kg; 69 st 9 lb) in Sep 1976. In Mar 1978, Minnoch was admitted to University Hospital in Seattle, USA, where consultant endocrinologist Dr Robert Schwartz calculated that he must have weighed more than 1,400 lb (635 kg; 100 st). Much of this was water accumulation owing to his congestive heart failure.
Jeff Peeters (BEL) built a bicycle weighing 860 kg (1,895 lb 15.6 oz) and rode it in Mechelen, Belgium, on 19 Aug 2015. The vehicle was built entirely from reused materials.
In 1960, a polar bear weighing some 900 kg (1,984 lb) was identified at a frozen ice pack in the Chukchi Sea, west of Kotzebue in Alaska, USA. Its size was estimated at 3.5 m (11 ft 5 in) over the body contours from nose to tail, 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) around the body and 43 cm (16.9 in) around the paws.
Belgium’s Mathias Willemijns grew a pumpkin that weighed 1,190.49 kg (2,624 lb 9 oz), as authenticated by the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) in Ludwigsburg, Germany, on 9 Oct 2016.
On 21 Jan 1993, a 1.69-tonne (3,739-lb) filled doughnut was served up by representatives from Hemstrought’s Bakeries, Donato’s Bakery and the radio station WKLL-FM (all USA) in Utica, New York, USA.
Specimens of the sunfish (Mola mola) have been recorded weighing around 2 tonnes (4,400 lb) and measuring 3 m (10 ft) between the tips of the fins.
The Panzerbike, constructed by Tilo and Wilfried Niebel of Harzer Bike Schmiede in Zilly, Germany, weighed 4.749 tonnes (10,470 lb) on 23 Nov 2007.
A scientifically recorded whale shark (Rhincodon typus) caught off Baba Island, near Karachi, Pakistan, on 11 Nov 1949, weighed 21.5 tonnes (47,400 lb). At 12.65 m (41 ft 6 in) long, it was also the largest fish. Cartilaginous fish have skeletons made of cartilage, rather than the hard bone of many other fish species.
The M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, produced by General Dynamics Land Systems (USA), has a combat weight of 63 tonnes (138,900 lb), making it the heaviest tank currently in operational service. It is equipped with one 120-mm gun and has a top speed of 68 km/h (42 mph).
The Mingun bell weighs 92 tonnes (202,825 lb) and has a diameter of 5.09 m (16 ft 8 in) at the lip. Located near Mandalay in Burma, the bell is struck by a teak boom from the outside. It was cast at Mingun late in the reign of King Bodawpaya (1782–1819).
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) weighs up to 160 tonnes (352,000 lb) and has an average length of around 24 m (80 ft). A huge specimen caught in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, on 20 Mar 1947 weighed 190 tonnes (418,878 lb) with a recorded length of 27.6 m (90 ft 6 in).
The aircraft with the highest standard maximum take‑off weight is the Antonov An‑225 “Mriya” (Dream). Originally it weighed 600 tonnes (1.32 million lb), but between 2000 and 2001 its floor was strengthened, which resulted in an increased maximum take‑off weight of 640 tonnes (1.41 million lb). Only two of these behemoths were ever built.
Saturn V (USA) was the largest rocket, although not the most powerful. It was 110.6 m (363 ft) high with the Apollo spacecraft on top and weighed 2,903 tonnes (6.4 million lb) on the launchpad. Saturn V had a lift‑off thrust of 3,447 tonnes (7.6 million lb). The first Saturn V was launched in 1967 and the 13th, and last, took off in 1973.
According to Off‑Highway Research, the heaviest machine capable of moving under its own power is the 14,196-tonne (31.3-million-lb) Bagger 293 bucket-wheel excavator, an earth-moving machine made by TAKRAF of Leipzig, Germany. Employed in an open-cast coal mine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, it is 220 m (722 ft) long and 94.5 m (310 ft) tall at its apex. It is capable of shifting 240,000 m³ (8.475 million cu ft) of earth per day.
On 23 Sep 1980, NATO announced the launch of the first of Russia’s 941 Akula‑class submarines (designated “Typhoon” by NATO) at a secret covered shipyard on the White Sea. The vessels were reported to have a dived displacement of 26,500 tonnes (58.422 million lb) and measure 171.5 m (562 ft 8 in) overall. For more information, see p.211.
The Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, is considered to be the heaviest building in the world. It contains 700,000 tonnes (771,617.9 tons) of steel and bronze combined with 1 million m³ (35.3 million cu ft) of marble, 3,500 tonnes (7.7 million lb) of crystal glass and 900,000 m³ (31.7 million cu ft) of wood.
In 2009, astronomers using NASA’s Swift gamma-ray space telescope measured the mass of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the quasar S5 0014+81, based on its extreme luminosity. The resulting mass of around 40 billion solar masses makes this black hole approximately 10,000 times more massive than the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.
