Detroit resident Claude P. Moore’s rubber band ball now holds the Guinness World Records title for the largest of its kind. It weighed 11,578 pounds when measured at Belle Isle on August 29, following an 11-year project that began with a challenge from coworkers.
Guinness confirmed the ball’s weight as 5,251.69 kilograms, or 11,578 pounds, according to Guinness World Records. Moore began the project in 2015 after coworkers dared him to make a massive rubber band ball, and he spent more than a decade assembling it, as reported by UPI.
Moore has hemophilia, a rare blood disorder, and has said he started making rubber band balls while waiting at medical appointments. The project eventually outgrew his garage; Guinness says he moved the expanding ball to a storage unit.
Getting an 11,000-Pound Ball to Belle Isle
The official weighing required moving the ball from storage to Belle Isle. UPI reported that Moore and dozens of helpers rolled it out, and a crane was used to hoist it for transport. A Guinness World Records adjudicator witnessed the weighing and confirmed the record.
The title’s previous holder, Joel Waul, called his ball Megaton. The Broward Palm Beach New Times reported that it stood six feet seven inches tall, had a 26-foot circumference and was later housed at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum in Orlando. In 2016, Will Love said he hoped to build a 20,000-pound ball within two years, though it remains unclear whether that project was completed, according to the Broward Palm Beach New Times.
The Record’s Timeline and Setting
According to Guinness World Records, Joel Waul’s 9,032-pound (4,097-kilogram) ball, made in Florida in 2008, held the title before Moore’s 11,578-pound ball was measured at Belle Isle. The Detroit weighing marked a new record after Waul’s run as title holder. Belle Isle was the setting for that measurement. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources describes it as the third-largest island in the Detroit River.
A Bigger Goal Than Guinness
Moore has described the record as a first step toward a much larger ambition: ending world hunger, according to Guinness. Guinness has published a video about his path from pastime to record holder, and Celebitchy also noted that the record grew out of a stress-relieving hobby.
Moore’s record turns an unlikely hobby into a Detroit milestone: an 11-year project that grew from a garage-sized pastime into a ball requiring a storage unit and a crane to reach its official weighing.
