Man Drops World's Largest Rubber-Band Ball

It took five years, and a couple thousand pounds of rubber and related products, to create it, and its builder, Welshman Tony Evans, 62, from Swansea, always wondered if, assuming it were dropped with enough AGL, if it would bounce -- or, more properly, how high it would bounce.

He got a television show, Ripley's Believe it or Not, interested enough that it chartered a plane and a skydiving cameraman, and they all took the monster ball a mile high above the Mojave desert... and let it go.

Twenty seconds later, the cameraman and others on the ground recorded a dust cloud, as the Guinness Bood of Records-featured ball [officially weighed at 2524 lbs last Memorial Day --ed.] hit the sandy Earth.

That was about it -- although the ball made a crater four feet across, and the dust cloud was reported to have had a 10-foot radius, the ball itself never reappeared; it just disintegrated, becoming as one with the ground.

Evans, his curiosity satisfied, was quoted by the Daily Record, as having said, "It was my pride and joy." Why did he do it? "People were always asking me what would happened if the ball was dropped from a great height. Would it bounce or explode? No one knew." Now they do.

FMI: www.guinnessworldrecords.com