From theworld ’s long report airplane flightto the world’slargest beer taste , Guinness World Records has tracked spheric achievements and oddities since the 1950s . The brand employs one C of the great unwashed in locations place from London and New York to China and Japan who catalogue pogo - stick races and unusually expectant qat with the same solemness as summit climbs and Paralympic sports .
So just howdidGuinness , a Dublin , Ireland - found manufacturer of a particularly notable hardy beer , become Byzantine in chronicling and adjudicating reality records ? The fact that the world record catalog authority and Guinnessbeershare a name is much more than a simple coincidence , although these daysGuinness World Recordsand the beer company are no longer formally linked .
While there ’s no record of anyone enunciate , " Hold my beer and determine this , " there isa historic accountof a discussion between Sir Hugh Beaver , managing film director of the Guinness Brewery , and his boniface during a European hunting expedition that started it all . In 1951 , Beaver shot at a game bird and missed , leading the party to wonder about the fastest game Bronx cheer in universe .
" They failed to chance any reference to information associate to the truehearted game bird in Europe , " says Peter Harper , a aged vice president at Guinness World Records .
The deficiency of information continued to peck Beaver , who went on to discover that there was no single prescribed book of the truehearted game bird — or much of anything else , for that topic . With the help of Norris and Ross McWhirter , journalists who also were brothers , Beaver amassed records into a Koran published in the summertime of 1955 . The 50,000 written matter of the script , complete with urine - repellent covers , were have in mind primarily as promotional items for the Guinness brewery , but Beaver soon realized he ’d tapped into a public wonder much like his own . And , not only did band of people want to know who and what held the world record book for all manner of things , they wanted to hold humanity records of their own .
" Since the first variant of the Guinness World Records book — which was known then as the Guinness Book of Records — in 1955 , we have been charge to animate somebody through recitation , watching , listening and participating in record breakage , " harpist says .
Guinness World Records receives thousands of lotion each calendar month , most of which are for new records set in family that did n’t exist in 1955 , such as body modification . The most pierced human in the world , according to Guinness World Records , is Rolf Buchholz of Dortmund , Germany . He has 453 piercings on his cheek and body . AndRobert Pershing Wadlow(1918 - 1940 ) stay the macrocosm ’s tallest mankind who ever lived at 8 feet , 11 inches ( 271 cm ) , though these years Turkish national Sultan Kosen holds the book at 8 substructure , 3 inches ( 251 centimeters ) for tallest living humankind .
The rarity compendium that build up GWR into a global brand name is now owned by theJim Pattison Group — the same company that owns Ripley ’s consider it or Not ! — has evolved into an case platform as well .
The party launched Guinness World Records Live ! — a " unrecorded record - break up experience " that ’s been tour Europe for years — in the United States in 2016 . During a GWR Live ! session , meeter can practice , attempt and potentially set or break Guinness World Record titles in literal time with Guinness World Record coach on hand to lend expert advice and encouragement .
" Thanks to Sir Hugh ’s knowledgeableness of this reference book and the dedication of our various Records Managers and the public over the last 61 years , " say Harper , " we ’ve become the spherical self-confidence on disc breaking as we continue our commission to inquiry , measure , document and authorize on the world ’s superlatives . "
And with some tenacity , the statute title of man - record holder is open to anyone willing to , say , maturate your fingernailsfor as long as potential . What could be more thrilling than that ?
