Happy Guinness World Records Day! Today is the eighth annual event held (largely online) by the British arbiter of the Longest, Shortest, and Fastest. Today people around the globe are encouraged to attempt a wide variety of odd, impressive, and completely meaningless world records.

Here in Texas, however, people do that all the time, unprompted. In the past six weeks alone, the state has set four marks, starting with “The world’s largest Frito pie” (above) at the State Fair on October 1. And yesterday, because it’s also “America Recycles Week,” Dallas-based AT&T announced that it had set the record for “collecting the most wireless devices in a week.” 

Sure, that’s a little boring compared to older Texas records like “Most People Wearing Frog Masks” (set at Texas Tech) or—get ready to click!—”Dog With Largest Eyeballs.” But a record is a record. (And no, we don’t know why we didn’t do a whole post on the dog with largest eyeballs either.)

Texas is also the record-holder for “Largest Pecan Pie” and “Largest Serving of Salsa,” but we come up short with Guinness in a lot of other crucial food divisions. Here’s six world records that were set here, including the four newest, and four marks that the state has simply got to break.

SIX RECORDS SET IN TEXAS

1. FRITO PIE
As the TM Daily Post covered at the time, Frito-Lay and the State Fair of Texas teamed up for one giant trough-based serving of chili, cheese and corn chips that was officially adjudicated by Guinness at 1,325 lbs. It was the first time for this category. 

2. RECYCLING WIRELESS DEVICES
According to AT&T, Guinness has certified the company’s September collection of 50,942 devices in a week, and Texas beat every state, contributing 12.4% (5,879) of the dead phones. (California came in second with 4,916. Take that, tree huggers!)

3. CONSECUTIVE BACK HANDSPRINGS
As MyFoxDFW and Bruce Tomaso of the Dallas Morning News reported, 16 year-old Hockaday cheerleader Miranda Ferguson broke the record for consecutive back handsprings, which was 32, by executing the maneuver 35 times at halftime of a football game October 5. You can see the footage of that night, along with a lot more, in this clip of Ferguson’s appearance on “The Today Show.”

4. BREAST MILK DONATION
Yes, it sounds like a weird one, but it’s actually a major act of charity: as WFAA reported on October 24, Granbury mother Alicia Richman, having saved up more than enough frozen breast milk for her own baby, donated 86 gallons to the nonprofit Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas, which puts it to use in neonatal intensive care units.

5. PECAN PIE
World records and minor league baseball stunts: a natural fit. The El Paso Diablos set the pecan pie record back in 1999, making, according to Guinness spokesperson Sara Wilcox, a 50-footer (in diameter) that weighed in at just under 19 tons. She further elaborated that:

The crust was made from 3,471 lb of flour, 2,085 lbs of shortening, 170 lbs of sugar, 170 lbs of powdered milk and 3,000 lbs of water. The filling was made up of 1,500 lbs of pecans, 13,350 lbs of sugar, 850 lbs of margarine, 200 lbs of salt, 6,700 lbs of eggs, 210 lbs of vanilla [and] 9,700 lbs of corn syrup.

6. SALSA
The honor here goes to the Annual Tomato Festival in Jacksonville, where Bob Blumer of the TV show “Glutton For Punishment” put together a 500-gallon bowl (weighing 2,672-pounds) in 2010. 

AND FOUR RECORDS TEXAS NEEDS TO BREAK

1. FLOUR TACO
The Baja California city of Mexicali set this mark to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2003, fashioning a 1,654-pounder that was 36 feet long and included nearly 1,200 pounds of steak, 186 pounds of dough, 179 pounds of onions and 106 pounds of “coriander.” We assume the British Guinness means cilantro.

2. ENCHILADA
This one is a sad tale. The record for “largest enchilada,” at 3,122.063 pounds, belongs to the Gobierno Delegacional de Iztapalapa in Mexico. In April of 2011, a group in San Antonio set out to break the record for Fiesta. But according to Sarah Mills of the San Antonio Express-News, their 300-foot long, 1.5 ton slab of cheesy goodness, which used 1,900 pounds of cheddar, did not qualify because it wasn’t made from one single tortilla.

3. NACHOS
It’s one thing for Mexico to own such a record. But Lawrence, Kansas? That’s the place that currently lays claim to “the largest serving of nachos”—a 4,689-pound platter served up at the Kansas Relays this past April 21. The Kansas Relays? Your move, Texas.

4. CHILI CON CARNE
Truly, this one cannot stand. The world record for chili is the property of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. What’s next, Scranton-Wilkes Barre setting the mark for biggest bowl of queso? The Keystone Aquatic Club’s 1,438.32-pound serving of chili was cooked up in 2003. According to Guinness:

The process of cooking the chili began at 04.00 on 19 July and took 5 hours to make. This included the chopping of the vegetables and the firing of eight burners to cook the meat. Together with the usual ingredients, the chili con carne contained 6,434.49 g (226.97 oz) of Budweiser and 4,161.70 g (146.80 oz) of Coors beer.

So, we’re betting that at least 400 pounds of that was beans.