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05th Aug 2018

World record attempt at longest domino chain ruined by fly after agonising set-up

"There was no time to set up all the tiles again"

Kyle Picknell

You can’t tell us didn’t know exactly what it was doing.

Flies, as we all know, are the most annoying creatures on the planet. Flies are bastards. They’re even worse than people that don’t say thank you after you hold the door open and worse still than the people who get their feet out in public.

Flies, you see, exist merely to bounce their heads off glass. They fly away. Bzzzzzzzz. They come back. Bzzzzzzzz. They bounce their heads. Thump. Again. Thump. They fly away. Bzzzzzzzzz. They Come back. Thump. They fly away. Bzzzzzz. They come back. Thump.

On and on goes the merry dance and even with the windows open all around it, the fly still somehow manages to find that exact same square inch of glass to bash into as hard as possible, repeatedly, as though eventually it might just force a fly-shaped hole through to the other side.

So yeah, flies are quite annoying. Generally speaking.

Now imagine one had just knocked over 600,000 dominoes you had spent two weeks setting up with tweezers.

Does that sound infuriating? Does it? Because, yeah. Yeah, it does. It sounds really, really fucking infuriating.

And believe it or not, that is exactly what happened. This is a cold, cold universe we inhabit, people. Never forget that.

Sinners Domino Entertainment, a German group who break records, specifically domino-based records, were attempting to top their own 2013 Guinness World Record.

A team of 22 people spent a week setting up 596,229 mini dominoes with tweezers. Then, inevitably, a fly came along.

Bzzzzzzzzz. Thump.

And just like that, the dream was over.

The tiles were no bigger than a fingernail and somehow a fly managed to knock one over because, as we’ve established, flies are complete pricks like that.

Patrick Sinner of the group told a local newspaper: “The fly triggered the chain reaction prematurely. There was no time to set up all the little tiles again.”

The attempt took place in Nidda, near Frankfurt on Friday and means the record remains at 537,938 fallen tiles.

All was not lost, however, as they did manage to break four other records: longest chain reaction, longest spiral, longest wall and longest cube.

You can watch their 500,000 domino display from last year below: