There are a lot of weird sleep-related world records out there. From the longest line of human-mattress dominoes—2016 'dominoes' and took 14 minutes for all of them to fall—to the most people served breakfast in bed at once—418 people in 113 beds set up on the lawn of a Sheraton Hotel in China. But there's one record that remains elusive: who holds the record for longest consecutive slumber?
Tough to call
The length of time someone is actually asleep is pretty tough to measure, which is what has kept the official title out of the hands of sleepers around the world. That doesn't mean, however, that there have been no valiant attempts—though they don't really count as real sleep.
In October of 2017, Wyatt Shaw from Kentucky fell asleep for 11 days. He was just seven years old and doctors ran several tests with no conclusive explanations. Wyatt did wake up with cognitive impairment, particularly when walking and talking, but made a full recovery after treatment with drugs typically used in seizure management.
In 1959, UK hypnotist Peter Powers put himself under a hypnotic sleep for eight straight days. It made quite the splash in European media and radio shows, but doesn't quite count as sleeping.
