Andreas Mihavecz

Andreas Mihavecz (born 1960 or 1961) is an Austrian man from Bregenz who holds the record of surviving the longest without any food or liquids. His ordeal is documented in the Guinness World Records.

Background On 1 April 1979, the then 18-year-old Mihavecz was mistakenly put into custody in a holding cell for being a passenger in a crashed car and completely forgotten about by the three policemen responsible for him. Each of them thought that the two others had already freed Mihavecz. They also ignored the pleas of his worried mother, who was concerned for what might have happened to her son.

As Mihavecz's cell was in the basement, nobody could hear his screams. He survived by ingesting condensed water from the walls and eventually lost of weight. Mihavecz needed several weeks to regain his health.

Legacy Mihavecz's case was later included in the first edition of a German book on urban legends, as the updated form of a medieval German folk tale of the forgotten peasant in the debtors' prison.