Motivational speaker David Rush was looking for a way to share a message about perseverance when he came up with a zany idea: He would teach himself to juggle blindfolded, and go for the Guinness World Record. He’d learned to juggle while he was in college, and it seemed like a fun way to draw attention while also making up for the times he’d tried and failed to juggle while jogging, he said. Rush practiced juggling while blindfolded for weeks at his home in Boise, then in late 2015, he broke the world record with a time of 6 minutes 34 seconds.
It was heady stuff. Soon he decided that winning one Guinness title wasn’t enough. He wanted to break as many records as he could.
His 61⁄2-minute juggling record eventually led to him juggling while blindfolded for more than an hour, and Rush also shattered scores of other Guinness World Records, each one more oddball than the last. Catch 59 marshmallows in his mouth in less than one minute? No problem. Balance 101 toilet paper rolls on his head? Yes, please.
Earlier this year, after Rush broke his 180th world record for bursting the most balloons with chopsticks in one minute, he decided to go for the ultimate prize. He wanted to break the record of holding the most concurrent Guinness World Record titles. Although Guinness no longer monitors who tops the record for most broken records, Rush said he knew that Italian serial record breaker Silvio Sabba had also racked up 180 concurrent world record titles.
On January 30, Rush.