The tallest mound of chewing gum infographic - Redux

Another updated one, this time of a meteorology / food crossover.

©2015 James Mathurin

The longest prison sentence ever received for spitting chewing gum infographic

Cautionary tales of mastication, now in infographic form.

©2013 James Mathurin

The tallest mound of chewing gum infographic

The infographic form of last year's Tallest mound of Chewing Gum piece.

©2013 James Mathurin

The tallest mound of chewing gum

The tallest mound of chewing gum measured 19.35 metres, and was left behind after a thunderstorm in Quebec on April 20^th 1946. Professor Morton Signet, a meteorologist, concluded, “This is a similar sort of phenomenon to rains of frogs, where a freak weather system picks something up, probably from a body of water, and deposits it a great distance away. I am guessing that the moisture and movement within the storm cloud imitated a gigantic mouth, thus chewing the pieces of gum into one object, which was later deposited here in Quebec.” The mound collapsed five days later, killing a local poultry merchant.

Although the area has built up in the intervening years, this traffic sign is effectively used by academics and fans as representing the site of the chewing gum mound. Photograph by Dougtone.

   ©2012 James Mathurin 

The longest prison sentence ever received for spitting chewing gum

The longest prison sentence ever received for spitting chewing gum onto a pavement was 17 years, imposed on Pierre Bonnechop by a court in Paris France, in 1976. Bonnechop had been seen spitting out 79 kilogrammes of gum on the rue de Cheveux, over 3 hours, on the morning of February 16^th that year. By the time he was arrested, the pile of gum measured 76cm high. Pleading guilty in court, Bonnechop told the Magistrate, Henri Poivre, “I don’t know what came over me, but for those 3 hours, literally all I could think was chew, spit, chew, spit, chew, spit. It may have been a reaction to my worries over the French dairy farming industry.”

After his early release in 1990, Bonnechop moved to this farm, outside of Tours. He has voluntarily taken part in several public awareness campaigns about public hygiene, including 3 videos where he appears as the anti-chewing gum mascot, "Le monstre qui mâche". Photograph by PhillipC.

©2012 James Mathurin