Harvard Student Paddles Across Charles River in 1,400-lb Pumpkin

A Harvard University student has made headlines for crossing Massachusetts’ Charles River in a giant 1,400-pound pumpkin to raise money for a student lab.

After picking out the huge vegetable from a New Hampshire farm, senior Benjamin Chang and his friends spent two hours on Saturday carving it out so he could fit inside, reported WCVB. 

According to the local news outlet, Chang sat inside the monstrous pumpkin and paddled from the Cambridge side of the river to Boston, then back.

some @Harvard/@MIT fun… trying to row a pumpkin across the charles today 🎃 pic.twitter.com/dta0p2wTlP

— Raunak Chowdhuri (@raunakdoesdev) October 14, 2023

“There’s been so many roadblocks that have happened, and to actually be in the water in a giant pumpkin was so much fun,” Chang said after the long day of scooping out pumpkin guts with knives and shovels.

The friends’ project collected donations from a “couple dozen” people wanting to try out rowing the pumpkin in order to raise money for Harvard’s “student-led bio-engineering lab.” 

“It was also so much fun to let other people try this as well,” Chang said. “Seeing how excited and how strange of a feeling it was for other people to be inside this pumpkin was just as fun for me as being in it myself.”

Here's something you don't see every day! A local college student says he achieved a longtime dream by rowing across the Charles River in a giant pumpkin. 🎃 https://t.co/QmIRDufPTG pic.twitter.com/Ut9JExIVgO

— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) October 15, 2023

As Breitbart News reported in August 2022, a Nebraska man broke the Guinness World Record for longest journey traveled in a floating pumpkin.

According to the City of Bellevue, Duane Hansen made a 38-mile-long trip down the Missouri River to Nebraska City in his 846-pound floating pumpkin dubbed the “SS Berta.”