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National Champion Crab Races Day

February 17, 2017/0 Comments/in February

Today is National Champion Crab Races Day. How did it get its start?

“There’s only one Kentucky Derby, there’s only one Indy 500, and there’s only one crab race – the NCRA.”

So says Jim Morgan, who founded the National Crab Racing Association (NCRA) in 1979. His first act was to appoint himself “Commissioner for Life,” preventing the possibility of being voted out, a problem which plagues other sports.

Next, he went looking for a few good crabs. For six months, he scoured Florida for world-class racers, to no avail. Fate intervened one day on a beach in Siesta Key where he struck up a conversation with the head of Florida Marine Research (FMR), the number one importer of hermit crabs in the world. Thirty-seven years later, their business relationship is still going strong.

FMR crabs in designer shells

Crabs with the most potential are put through a rigorous training program to develop discipline, skill and a winning attitude. As with all athletes, only the most outstanding racers make the cut.

Crabs with the right stuff join the roster of the official racing circuit. Each year one champion receives the prestigious Morgan Trophy, the NCRA equivalent of college football’s Heisman Trophy.

A racer’s professional career lasts only six months; it’s a physically demanding sport. After retirement, they are adopted by good families to live out their lives in comfort.

Crabs in captivity may live only one year but with regular activity, other crabs to socialize with, and a visually stimulating “crabitat,” can live up to 20 years. See Hermit Crabs for Dummies to learn more.

Since 1979, the NCRA has toured the USA and Canada. (Quarantine laws prevent travel for overseas competitions.) It hosts many races at fairs, festivals, seafood restaurants and corporate events.

Have a happy National Champion Crab Races Day! And don’t keep it to yourself—that would be shellfish.

February 11 is Pro Sports Wives Day

February 11, 2017/0 Comments/in February

Today is the 11th annual Pro Sports Wives Day, a national day of recognition for the contributions of pro sports wives to their husband’s careers and the community. According to Statista, which gathers statistics from more than 18,000 sources, 2014 revenue of U.S. sports markets totaled 60.8 billion dollars.

Pro Sports Wives Day was instituted in 2006 by the Professional Sports Wives Association (PSWA), an organization that seeks to unite all sports wives and provide information about financial planning, childcare, household management, marital support, franchise opportunities and domestic violence.

PSWA publishes a quarterly e-magazine and its website includes videos about diabetes control and securing pensions. There is also a PSA that looks suspiciously like an ad for a traumatic brain injury treatment center, and another that turns out to be “an intimate message from God to you.”

The association began Pro Sports Wives Day to acknowledge the critical role that the wives of professional athletes play behind the scenes by helping to support their families, charities, foundations, and each other.

Pro Sports Wives Day honors the past year’s most distinguished mentors, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs. It also awards Married Female Athlete of the Year, Pro Sports Wives League of the Year and the Pro Sports Wives Courage Award, which typically goes to a wife who’s dealt with a devastating illness, either her own or that of a family member.

“Most fans think that the player’s lives are glamorous and that players, wives, and families do not have any problems that non-public families face, which is not true,” said Gena Pitts, founder of PSWA. “In fact, we face more physical, emotional, financial, divorce, and stressful situations simultaneously that money can not solve than most people face in a lifetime.”

That’s enlightening. We didn’t know that pro sports players and their families have it harder than the rest of us. No matter what we may think of that assertion, we should all take a moment to recognize the challenges these women face and overcome on a daily basis. And have a happy Pro Sports Wives Day!

November 12 is Guinness World Records Day

November 12, 2016/0 Comments/in November

Today is Guinness World Records Day, when hundreds of thousands of people around the globe will try to make it into the famous book.

Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday said, “Guinness World Records Day unites people across the planet from all walks of life, all of whom have one common goal – to become the greatest in the world at something.”

While today’s records are now being set, let’s take a look at a few recent successes.

Skateboarding Dog

In Lima, Peru, a skateboarding bulldog named Otto passed through 30 pairs of legs, earning him the Guinness World Record for Longest Human Tunnel Traveled Through by Skateboarding Dog.

Thirty people faced in one direction and stood with their feet apart to allow the three-year-old English Bulldog, to freely pass through the human tunnel without being led or touched.

A crowd gathered to watch the cute canine’s record-setting attempt. The video clearly shows that Otto was not simply rolling along. He was steering, leaning and course-correcting with his paws.
Guinness World Records adjudicator Sarah Cusson witnessed the event and presented Otto and his proud owners Luciana Viale and Robert Rickards with an official certificate. The record has yet to be broken.

Basketball Wizardry

Exhibition basketball team The Harlem Globetrotters celebrated Guinness World Records Day 2015 by achieving seven incredible world record titles at the Talking Stick Event Arena in Arizona, USA.

Farthest Kneeling Basketball Shot Made Backward–60 feet 7.5 inches (18.47 meters)

guinness book of world records day harlem-globetrotters-furthest-kneeling

Handles Franklin

Longest Underhand Basketball Shot–84 feet 8.5 inches (25.81 meters)

guinness book of world records day Harlem-Globetrotter

Hammer Harrison

Longest Basketball Shot Made Blindfolded–69 feet 6 inches (21.18 meters)–Thunder Law

Furthest Blindfolded Basketball Hook Shot–50 feet 3.5 inches (15.32 meters)–Big Easy Lofton

The Globetrotters also set records for Most Basketball Three Pointers Made by a Pair in One Minute, Longest Duration Spinning a Basketball on the Nose (7.7 seconds) and Most Basketball Slam Dunks in One Minute (19).

Find these and many more basketball world records here.

Stunt Parking

On November 12, 2015, Alastair Moffatt successfully reversed a classic Mini Cooper into a parking space, leaving a combined distance of just 34 centimeters between his car and the vehicles in front and behind.

Pedal to the floor, Alastair performed a dramatic J-turn, then a hand brake turn, to slot into an almost impossibly small space and break one of the most competitive records in the stunt driving field:

Tightest Parallel Parking in Reverse

An on-site official confirmed that Moffatt bested the previous record of 35 centimeters by 1 centimeter. (That is less than 13.39 inches!) The video is short, amazing and definitely worth watching.

Puppy Love

Let’s bookend the fun with another talented pooch. Purin, a nine-year-old Beagle, earned her place in the 2015 Guinness Book of World Records when she “saved” 14 mini soccer balls, smashing her previous record of 11.

Most Balls Caught by a Dog with the Paws in One Minute

She also holds the record for Fastest 10 Meters Traveled on a Ball by a Dog, after she balanced on an inflated ball and crossed the finish line in 11.9 seconds.

Check out thousands more records in the Guinness Book of World Records 2016 print edition, on its official website and YouTube page. Have a chart-bustingly great day!

Back to the Future Day Update: Cubs Win World Series!

November 3, 2016/0 Comments/in October

Most holidays don’t require frequent updates. They happen once a year and the details don’t change much. That is not the case with Back to the Future Day, which has continued to evolve since its first observance on October 21, 2015.

Back to the Future Part II was released in 1989. In it, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) utters the following line as he and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travel through time in his trusty DeLorean: “We’re descending toward Hill Valley, California, at 4:29 pm, on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015.”

While the time machine has not been perfected—as far as we know—some of the “technology” dreamed up for the movie has come to fruition. When Nike was offered product placement, execs imagined a pair of sneakers with self-tying laces. To celebrate the date when the real world caught up to the movie’s timeline, Nike created a working pair of Air Mags with self-tying laces and delivered them to Fox on October 21, 2015.

Fox tries on first working pair

For Back to the Future Day 2016, it produced 89 pairs of the sneakers and raffled or auctioned them off, raising more than $6.75 million dollars for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

The quest to create a hoverboard like the one McFly rides in the movie has been less successful. One prototype levitates over a special surface, has a battery that lasts less than two minutes and is so hard to steer that one reviewer simply spun around until someone came to his aid. Still, its maker produced 10 and sold them for $10,000 each.

Most hoverboards could be called HINOs (Hoverboards In Name Only). They are self-balancing scooters with wheels, like a Segway without handlebars. Many models have batteries that can overheat and burst into flame while being charged or ridden, presenting a potentially exciting yet possibly disastrous experience for riders. We’re still waiting for the real thing.

Without a doubt, one of the things Future fans will discuss for years to come isn’t a product but a “prediction” made as a joke by screenwriter Bob Gale. In Back to the Future Part II, the Chicago Cubs beat Miami to win the World Series on October 21, 2015.

Gale, a St. Louis Cardinals fan, later said he was trying to come up with something completely outrageous that could only happen in a fictional universe. He also pointed out that Miami had no team in 1989: “People don’t automatically realize when they watch the movie today, but we were predicting there would be a major league team in Miami.”

In reality, on October 21, 2015, the Cubs played the New York Mets in the fourth game of the National League Championship Series and lost. (The Mets swept all four games, obviating the need to continue the seven-game series.)

The Major League Baseball schedule has changed since the movie came out, which explains why the timing of the World Series isn’t quite right.

The story doesn’t end there. On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians to win its first World Series since 1908. Coincidence or fate a year late? You decide.

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Skateboarding Dog

Basketball Wizardry

Stunt Parking

Puppy Love