At 11:11 a.m. (EST) on 11/11/11, Las Vegas set a new Guinness World Record: the largest pair of fuzzy dice ever built – the total dots on the face numbering a-you-guessed-it 11.
Vegas is nothing if not a strip of indescribable scale, scope, stimulation and over-the-top, literally larger-than-life extravagance. Perhaps for these reasons Nevada ranked first in America for “overachieving” states in Guinness’ record book this past July 4th.
To accomplish something of this dubious magnitude requires more than a modicum of planning – especially to have the target date of the 11th hour. And for that matter the 11th minute of the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month.
And if you’re going to hold the record for the longest Lego train road bed ever built you better start making tracks. This past May 30th, WorldNet Daily TV showed the results of “80 Lego plastic toy enthusiasts (who took) nearly six hours to assemble the longest recognized plastic toy train track ever – nearly three miles.
Source“And it took the little engine that could some four hours to cover the course, at a break-neck speed of just about 1.2 miles per hour.”
For the record, it was 13,124 feet and it took 93,307 Lego pieces.
And two-months-time had it been constructed by one guy averaging 8 hours a day.
So woohoo for the choo-choo!
Fuzzy dice and interlocking plastic bricks does make you kind of wonder what it is we’re building with the skills, gifts, talents and abilities we’ve been given and the time in which we have to build it.
In the introduction to his book “Seven Men and the Secret of Their Greatness,” author Eric Metaxas declares “We need heroes and role models.” The history-makers in Metaxas’ book ascribed to a different set of criteria however than those in “Las Vegas, which has grown into a mecca for people trying to make history.”
Os Guinness (no, not that Guinness) wrote, “In a day when children are growing up stunted because of our diet of empty-headed celebrities and contemptible villains, true heroism and manliness needs special nourishment.”
If there is one common thread that is the tie that binds those whose historical records are worth remembering vs. folks who fade into the fog of the fuzzy, fleeting and forgettable, it is their resolution, dedication and aspiration to be of benefit – most often a life-long struggle vs. a paragraph or a page insertion in a record book collecting dust in the archives – to make honorably right what is horribly wrong for their fellow suffering human beings.
