PATTAYA, Thailand – A Thai snake charmer kissed 19 highly poisonous king cobras in an attempt to set a world record.
One by one, the cobras were released Saturday onto a stage set up in Pattaya, a Thai beach resort town, as the snake charmer, Khum Chaibuddee, kissed one and then moved onto the next.
Security was tight, with four additional snake charmers flanking the stage at each corner and a medical team waiting on the sidelines with serum in case one of the snakes snapped, according to a statement from Thailand’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in Pattaya, which organized the event.
The museum’s manager, Somporn Naksuetrong, said Ripley’s planned to submit the attempt to the Guinness Book of World Records to overtake a previous record set in 1999 when an American kissed 11 venomous snakes.
Khum, a part-time snake charmer for more than 12 years, urged children and onlookers not to try the feat.
“I, myself, have been bitten several times by snakes,” he said in a statement. “Always bear in mind the old story about the snake charmer who died (from being) bitten by snakes.”
Avid sports fan names baby boy ESPN Montana
BILOXI, Miss. – Leann Real promised her husband, an avid sports fan, that if they ever had a son he’d get to pick the name.
ESPN Montana Real was born this week at Biloxi Regional Medical Center.
Rusty Real, of D’Iberville, chose ESPN (pronounced Espen) after the sports network and Montana after football legend Joe Montana.
Baby ESPN isn’t alone.
Three others were cited in a 2005 report on tivocommunity.com about the network’s 25th anniversary. They are Espn Malachi McCall in Pampa, Texas; Espn Curiel in Corpus Christi, Texas; and Espn Blondeel in Michigan.
“We were the talk of the hospital,” Rusty Real said. “The nurses kept asking my wife if she was really going to let her husband name him ESPN. She said, ‘Oh, yes.’ “
From Herald news services
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