5 votes

Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

Posted by mycketforvirrad
Tags: ask.discussion, recurring.weekly, offbeat fridays, offbeat

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like feudalism.techno, gmail and the oatmeal. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was truly bamboozled.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

2 comments

  1. [2]
    mycketforvirrad
    Link
    ‘Finally, I did it!’: TikTok star Aurélien Fontenoy cycles up Eiffel Tower’s 686 steps in extraordinary world record time CNN – Jamie Barton – 5th October 2025

    ‘Finally, I did it!’: TikTok star Aurélien Fontenoy cycles up Eiffel Tower’s 686 steps in extraordinary world record time

    There are not many world records in sports which last for more than 23 years.

    Then again, there are not many records you look at and think “Where did someone even get the idea to do that?”

    On Friday, one of those bizarre records fell when cyclist and social media star Aurélien Fontenoy rode his bicycle to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, the highest platform that can be accessed by stairs.

    CNN – Jamie Barton – 5th October 2025

    2 votes
    1. CannibalisticApple
      Link Parent
      In twelve minutes??? That's genuinely insane. My mom and I visited the Eiffel Tower last year and made the mistake of walking down the steps from the second story to the first. That probably took...

      He did so in 12 minutes and 30 seconds, smashing the previous record set by Hugues Richard in 2002 by nearly seven minutes.

      In twelve minutes??? That's genuinely insane. My mom and I visited the Eiffel Tower last year and made the mistake of walking down the steps from the second story to the first. That probably took 5-10 minutes, in part because we started rushing after some primal part of our brains objected to the heights, and exhausted us. I did the math back then and calculated that would've been in the range of 10-15 stories.

      Near the end of our descent we passed some people going up and felt some minor sympathy for them since we were so sore just going down. I can't imagine biking up that, and that was just going from one floor to the other!

      2 votes