Not That China: The Fastest Sofa Ever 

This week in Leicestershire, England, one of the great Guinness Book world records was broken. Don't fret, it wasn't the dude with the fingernails or the fattest twins ever on the motorcycles. Their records remain in tact. This isn't a story about those guys that made me cringe as a kid leafing through the Guinness Book of World Records. And this isn't a story about China.

This is a story about Ed China, an engineer who designs sofas that travel faster than my mother's Ford Taurus wagon. In 1998, Ed China set the world record for the world's fastest sofa when he took his couch up to a whopping 87 mph. This week a sofa that China built but didn't drive hit 92 mph, thus shattering his own record and redefining the previously held beliefs about how fast a piece of furniture could travel.

China began building custom vehicles in the 90s to raise money for charity. He built the "world's fastest office," a full-size office desk that traveled over 80 mph on an English racetrack. He's built vehicles out of tool sheds and beds as well.

The 92-mph sofa was designed as a promotion for sofa.com, who sponsored the construction of the sofa on wheels and plastered its name on the vehicle as if it were a race car.

The driver, who broke China's record, was Gardener Marek, 38, of London, who won the right to drive the sofa in an online auction, the proceeds of which went to The Foundation for the study of infant deaths.

The feat will be included in the 2008 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records.