What's the most remarkable thing you've ever done in one day? Your proudest achievement, if you will. Many of us accomplish great things in our lives, but often they're the result of a process. Becoming the first person in your family to go to college. Writing a novel. Traveling the world. Many wonderful things can happen over time, but fitting an accomplishment into a single day is much more difficult. Some people don't just do it, they do it in truly incredible ways.
10. Indian singer SPB recorded 21 songs in one day.
Indian singer SPB was a man dedicated to his craft. Real name: Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam, he holds the world record for the longest recording. 40,000 songs in 16 languages, which is a feat that, frankly, is hard to wrap your head around. But he didn't stop there.
His 40,000 songs were apparently written over the course of his entire life. But even in a single day, he accomplished amazing things. He also managed record 21 songs in one day, actually just 12 hours, back in 1981. He also managed to record 19 Tamil songs in one day and 16 Hindi songs in one day. He also provided the voice for countless Bollywood actors when they were required to sing.
9. Charles Servizio did over 46,000 push-ups in one day.
How many push-ups do you think you can do? Or what do you think the average number is? Some super-fitness gurus can jump down and do 1,000 push-ups in the blink of an eye. But according to one survey, more than half Americans can't do 10 push-ups in a row. Worse, more than a third couldn't do 5 in a row. All of this makes Charles Servizio's words even more impressive.
In 1993, Servizio broke the Guinness World Record by performing 46,001 push-ups in 24 hours. That's 1,916 push-ups per hour. That's about 32 every minute. While the record for push-ups in an hour was beaten many times , and people surpassed Servizio's hourly record, 24 hours stood still for three decades.
8. Ben Feldman sold $20 million in insurance in one day.
Ben Feldman's legacy is either the most amazing salesman of all time or the somewhat tragic tale of a man who was way, way too passionate about his work. Who knows, maybe both. Either way, Feldman went down in history as a near-mythical insurance salesman who managed to sell $20 million in insurance in a single day.
Feldman, while working as an insurance agent, accomplished things that boggle the mind. If $20 million a day isn't enough, consider that he once sold $100 million in a year. For my life he sold 1.5 billion dollars . He earned $1 million a year in commissions. He personally sold more insurance than entire companies. In the 1970s, he personally sold more insurance than 1,500 insurance companies in America. Essentially, this man was Insurance Superman.
How can a man become a sales force? This part is harder to understand. Rumor has it that Feldman was so shy that he once spoke at a seminar. behind the screen , so as not to see the crowd. But it looks like he didn't do much either.
He researched life insurance from 10 a.m. until midnight every night before going to bed. He worked 12 hours a day, six and even seven days a week, and it certainly paid off, as he proved himself a defining force in life insurance, arguably changing the entire landscape. Before Feldman, most insurance companies wouldn't insure people for more than $50,000, arguing that no one needed that much insurance.
7. In Sweden, 360,000 streets were changed from left to right in one day.
One of the most noticeable differences between the UK and North America is how people drive. The British drive on the left side of the road. This relic of a bygone era still persists in former British colonies. New Zealand, South Africa, and Mutla drive on the left. In fact, 76 countries drive on the left, while 163 adhere to the right .
Sweden was once a left-wing country, but in 1967 they switched to the right. And it happened in one day. The entire country underwent a revolution, encompassing 360,000 streets and 60,000 miles of roads . It happened at 4:50 a.m., when all traffic was stopped for 10 minutes to allow a transfer. And when it was done, everyone went right. It sounds ridiculously simple on paper, but it's not.
The switchover required four years of planning and a whopping £80 million. 350,000 street signs were replaced overnight. It took the work of soldiers, police, and volunteers—more than 200,000 people in total—to make it happen in a single day. The switchover was done, in part, to accident prevention . Most Swedish drivers had foreign cars with left-hand drive, which made driving on the left more confusing.
6. Will Ferrell played for 10 MLB teams in one day
The record for playing for most MLB teams in a single day doesn't even make sense, because why would anyone need to play for more than one team in a day? At best, it seems like a weird trade could have resulted in a player being traded to two teams in a day, like Joel Youngblood in 1982. Luckily, Will Ferrell isn't actually a player, and a lot of what he does is weird, so it makes for a strange feeling after the fact. Ferrell holds the record for most games played for 10 MLB teams in one day .
In 2015, actor Will Ferrell went on spring training As part of an HBO special filmed for Funny or Die in collaboration with Major League Baseball, Ferrell was part of a special that was filmed for the MLB program. The show was meant to support cancer research, so MLB allowed Ferrell to play with 10 different teams throughout the day, playing literally every position on the field. To do this, he had to be flown by helicopter to five different stadiums.
By the end of the day, Ferrell was an Angel, a Sportsman, a Cub, a Diamondback, a Dodger, a Giant, a Mariner, a Padre, a Red Sox, and a White Sox.
5. The First Minnesota Regiment had the greatest single-day loss of any American regiment.
While a positive achievement in a single day is always commendable, sometimes something can be remarkable for how terrible it was. Such was the case with the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.
The regiment had proven its valor in more than one battle before Gettysburg, but it was this historic battle that proved their mettle and cemented their place in the history books. It is said that if it hadn't been for the 1st Minnesota, the Union would have lost Gettysburg.
It was July 2, and the Union was being pushed back by Confederate forces that vastly outnumbered them. Reinforcements were still far away, and Union General Sickles, an untested leader, made a foolish move without orders, creating a gap in the Union lines that the Confederate forces exploited. There were very few veteran soldiers on the ground to try to hold off the enemy, with the exception of the battle-tested 1st Minnesota Regiment. They began the war with 1,000 men, but after three previous battles, their numbers had dwindled to 262.
Sickles' actions nearly doomed the Union. The fear was that if the Confederate army stormed the rest of the Union, the war would effectively be lost. The 1st Minnesota was ordered to close the gap with odds of six to one . They only needed five minutes for reinforcements to arrive.
262 men advanced, knowing they were being sent to their deaths. They fought tenaciously, and their flag fell five times, each time picked up by someone else. By the end, 215 men had died, a total of 821 TP3T for the entire regiment. To this day, it remains the largest loss of life for any regiment in a single day of combat. They held out for 15 minutes, turning the tide of the battle for the Union.
4. Mosquitoes kill more people per day than sharks did in 100 years.
The humble mosquito is one of the greatest pests known to man. They're small, a nuisance, and exist in every country on Earth except Antarctica and, curiously, Iceland. This makes them incredibly difficult to escape. They're also prolific killers. Mosquitoes will kill more people in a single day than sharks. over the last 100 years .
In 2016, mosquitoes were responsible for approximately 1,470 deaths per day. This is due to a number of fatal diseases that mosquitoes can transmit to humans, including malaria. On the other hand, from 1916 to 2016, sharks killed only 1,035 people.
Climate change has made conditions more favorable for mosquitoes, and it is believed that in the future, the gap between mosquitoes and sharks will only widen as mosquitoes become more and more deadly. In 2018, mosquitoes 830,000 people were killed , which averages about 2,274 people per day.
3. Every day, 4.5 million thin mints are baked for Girl Scouts.
Every year, the Girl Scouts hold their annual candy drive, and people go crazy for them. Thin mints seem to be the most popular, making up 25% total cookies sold , and to meet demand, a lot of cookies need to be produced.
To keep up with demand for Thin Mint, per day during peak demand for cookies is baked 4.5 million Thin Mint . Considering the girls sell a whopping 200 million boxes of cookies, volume is clearly needed.
2. Martian lunar orbits result in more than three eclipses per day
Science fiction shows and movies often run into a bit of a snag when trying to discuss time in an intergalactic context, especially with alien species. When you talk about a day or a year, it's entirely based on how we define time on Earth. A year is the time it takes a planet to orbit the Sun. To an alien, this would mean nothing. Each planet in our solar system has a different length of time, which would be one of their years. Mars, in particular, can do quite a bit because of how the moon rotates there.
On Earth, we get between four and seven eclipses a year. On Mars, you get an average of 3.2 every day thanks to how quickly the Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos orbit the planet. Although the moons are too small to completely block the sun, they still pass by it. Phobos completes an orbit every 7.65 hours, and Deimos every 30.35 hours.
1. A Chinese container ship produces as much pollution in one day as 500,000 trucks.
A modern container ship can have length up to 1320 feet . It takes a lot of energy to move a ship of this size, loaded with hundreds of tons of shipping containers, and that means burning a lot of fuel. In China, just one of these massive shipping containers emits as much pollution in a day as500,000 trucks on the roads.
The fuel used by these ships in China is also the lowest quality diesel fuel with high pollutant content. The sulfur content in 35 times greater allowed in the Port of Los Angeles. It has been estimated that pollution caused by things like these container ships contributes to the premature deaths of 1.2 million people.