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Michel Lotito was a French entertainer renowned for his unusual diet, earning him the nickname “Monsieur Mangetout” (“Mr. Eat-it-All”). He was known to consume bicycles, TV sets, and other items made of metal and glass. In a 1978 interview with Canadian newspaper The Leader-Post, the man with the seemingly iron stomach claimed to have eaten his first piece of glass in a swimming pool at the age of 16 before going on to eat “plates, nails, and bottles — all to win bets.” He later carved out a career eating indigestible objects for others’ amusement.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factDonald Gorske is a McDonald’s superfan who has consumed more than 34,000 Big Macs. The Wisconsinite ate his first Big Mac on May 17, 1972, and loved it so much that he ate eight more that day alone. In 1999, he set the Guinness World Record for most Big Macs eaten in a lifetime (15,490).
On one occasion in 1978, Lotito ate 15 pounds of a bicycle over the course of 12 days for $5,000 (around $24,000 today), washing it down with 10 bottles of mineral oil and 100 razor blades on the side. To digest these materials, Lotito chopped the metal items into tiny pellets, stretched his meals out over multiple days, and drank plenty of water. Newspapers also reported on Lotito’s ability to consume TV sets, and he once ate a whole waterbed to help promote a Texas-based furniture company.
However, Lotito’s most awe-inspiring feat, if true, was his claim to have consumed an entire Cessna 150 aircraft between 1978 and 1980 — an achievement confirmed by Guinness World Records but deemed unverifiable (though possible) by Snopes. Lotito maintained the truth of this claim until he died of natural causes in 2006, and in a 1999 interview with journalist Ben Sherwood, he purported the plane’s rubber tires to be the least appetizing part of the aircraft.
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The first meal in space was beef and liver paste.
A woman traveled more than 86,000 miles by bicycle in a single year.
Amanda Coker is an endurance cyclist who currently holds the record for the greatest distance cycled in a single year by either a woman or a man. She covered 86,573.2 miles between May 15, 2016, and May 14, 2017, averaging 237.19 miles each day. She largely achieved the record by cycling through the same 7-mile stretch of paved trails in Flatwoods Conservation Park near Tampa, Florida, where Coker usually spent more than 12 hours a day pedaling away.
She continued on until July 11, 2017, in an effort to become the fastest person to complete 100,000 miles. Coker finally accomplished the feat after 423 days, shattering legendary cyclist Tommy Godwin’s 500-day record set back in 1940. On October 23, 2021, Coker also became the first recorded female cyclist to break 500 miles in 24 hours, riding a whopping 512.5 miles in that brief time frame.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism Media, and previously contributed to television programs such as "Late Show With David Letterman" and "Impractical Jokers." Bennett is also a devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
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