One of the oldest unbroken records in world sport is Havel Smirchic's 1878 stone skipping record. Using very flat, smooth pieces of the silesian shale found in his native Czechoslovakia, Smirchic skipped a stone 438 times across a shallow lake on a single throw. He attributed his extraordinary talent to the suitability of shale for skipping, and his day job transporting houses by trolley.