600 monkey bars, 216 metres up: a South African crossed under Bloukrans Bridge by hand in 47 minutes

Bloukrans Bridge, on South Africa's Garden Route, towers 216 metres (about 709 feet) above the river — famous for the bungee jump off the top. Thomas van Tonder, a South African obstacle-course racing champion, chose the underside instead. On 26 October he became the first person to cross beneath the bridge on a specially built course of 600 suspended monkey bars, stretched along the 280-metre arch — climbing uphill against exhaustion, then fighting gravity on the way down. He completed all 600 bars in 47 minutes and 37 seconds, in a world-first feat staged as Red Bull Bridge Bars. It is the kind of record that exists purely because someone looked at an iconic structure and asked a question nobody else had thought to ask: not over it, not off it — under it, by hand.