Claim:   Two men each lost an arm in a grisly tug-of-war contest.

Status:   True.

Origins:   On 25 October 1997, a mass tug-of-war contest was held at a park along the Keelung River in Taipei in celebration of Retrocession Day (the 52nd anniversary of the end of the Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan). Over 1,600 participants joined in the contest, exerting over 80,000 kg of force on a 5-cm nylon rope that could bear a force of about 26,000 kg at most.

Within seconds the rope snapped, severing the left arms of two men (Yang Chiung-ming and Chen Ming-kuo) below the shoulder. (The severing of the limbs was believed to have been caused by sheer rebounding force of the broken rope rather than the men's having wrapped the rope around their arms, as was sometimes reported.) The victims were taken to Mackay Memorial Hospital and underwent seven hours of microsurgery to reattach their arms.

Last updated:   28 September 1998