FEATURING in the Guinness Book of Records cannot be the easiest route
to immortality. The publishers may demand signed log books to record
''unremitting surveillance'', and even then there is no guarantee of a
mention. Such has been the fate of an Indian youth called Parthasarthy,
who this week made his 85th try by eating two rose bushes. It was a
heroic act, although less hazardous than his next attempt, which is to
eat 625 chillies. His previous efforts have included pushing a mustard
seed backwards with his nose for a quarter of a mile, and swallowing 36
raw eggs. As Guinness point out, however, unique occurrences are not in
themselves records. Exploits like riding in full armour from Edinburgh
to Dumfries, which took Mr Dick Brown 28 hours in the saddle, are judged
purely on their merits. Even then, records invite competition. World
fame could last for only a single edition.
The best route to immortality seems to be giving one's name to
something. The Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh is remembered as a
raincoat, and John McAdam for his tarmac roads. The 7th Earl of Cardigan
lives on as a woolly jumper, and 2nd Earl of Yarborough as a poor hand
of cards. Even Brownie points are said to derive from a superintendent
of the Pullman Car Company.
The most lasting fame probably comes through science. Who would
remember the botanist Leonhard Fuchs without fuchsias, or Anders Dahl
without dahlias? It is honour usually conferred for merit. Mr John
Gutfreund, who arranged a financial deal whereby Sweden wrote off a #16m
Costa Rican debt in return for the establishment of a 210,000-acre
national park, had a new species of wasp named after him. He is now
immortalised in wasp textbooks as Eruga gutfreundi. The deal can be
purely financial, however. At the last World Congress of Herpetology,
potential sponsors were being offered a link with two new varieties of
skink, a kind of Madagascan burrowing lizard. Being remembered as a
reptile may not be the most desirable route to fame, of course, but it
is safer that eating 625 chillies.
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