The more cynical and sarcastic Illinois resident might respond "we've already got record-setting taxes, crime, gas prices, unemployment, and numbers of people leaving the state--are those the records you're talking about?"

To that I would say "Sorry Bill Buzzkill, I'm not talking about those things. I mean real, honest-to-goodness Guinness Book of World Records...er...records."

Believe it or not, Illinois has plenty, and many of them are kind of weird.

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Illinois may have several world records for political bribery attempts. Here's one example. (Getty Images)
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US Dollars in brown envelope
And here's another. (Getty Images)
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We've Set Some Pretty Odd World Records In The Past, Like The Amount Of People Husking Corn, Cloves Of Garlic Eaten In A Minute, Largest Square Dance, And Claps-Per-Minute--But 2022 Was A Very Big Year For Illinois' World Record Breakers

The husking corn record was set in 2012 when almost 3,500 students from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana...well, husked some corn. The record for cloves of garlic eaten in one minute was also set in 2012, when an East Dundee man pounded down 36 cloves in a minute. The square dance record was nailed down in 2011 when 800-plus kids at Yorkville Middle School had a big hoedown.

Illinois also set the world record for the tallest man back in 1940, when Alton's Robert Wadlow was measured at 8 feet 11.1 inches. Surprisingly, he went undrafted by the NBA.

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Robert Wadlow, from Alton, Illinois was tall standing up, or... (Getty Images)
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...even lying down. (Getty Images)
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2022 Might Have Been Illinois' Biggest Record-Setting Year Yet

It seems that plenty of us in Illinois had some big ambitions to set world records, and the leisure time to do it in 2022. I would've thought that the height of the pandemic would have been a better time (so many of us had too much spare time), but I guess masks are not conducive to record-breaking.

Here's a quick list of some of the records we set here in the Land of Lincoln in 2022 (big hat-tip to Patch.com):

Westmont: The record for largest fruit display was broken by Del Monte Fresh Produce and Jewel-Osco in Westmont on June 8th, using 211,000 bananas.

Geneseo: On March 12, 2022, Dalton Meyer set the record for most hand-claps in one minute at 1,140.

Woodstock: October 29th, 2022, "Sonny" Molina threw 509 lanyards around his neck, which set a new record for...yep...lanyards around someone's neck.

Chicago: August 15th, 2022, Brenden Myers decided to crack (that's how you make them light up) 58 glowsticks in one minute, and set a new world record.

Dekalb: On March 29th, 2022, students at Northern Illinois University created the world's largest paper snowflake, which measured 13.58 meters. Since we're all Americans here, I've converted that to feet for us: 44 feet, 6.6 inches.
Click here for more about Illinois' world record holders.

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Gallery Credit: Stacker

 

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