News In Brief

A 78-pound turkey trots into the Guinness book

Mankind has scaled new heights of achievement this year in turkey breeding, coin balancing, marathon crawling, and finger-tip press-ups, according to the latest Guinness Book of Records, published today.

On balance it has been a good year for records, requiring the compilers to rewrite almost a quarter of the 15,000 entries that appeared in the last, 29th, edition of the record book. The compilers rate an entry of their own, because the 30th edition, appearing in 23 languages, is expected to take total sales to 50 million copies - a world record, naturally.

As for the new records: the heaviest turkey of all time weighed in at 78 pounds, 14 3/4 ounces; a Canadian broke the world coin-balancing record by stacking 175 coins flat on a silver dollar; two Englishmen captured a record by crawling 26.5 miles on their hands and knees; and their compatriot took another by performing 1,009 press-ups on his finger tips.