Llegend has it that the story of “Guinness World Record” began in Ireland in 1951. During a hunting trip, Hugh Beaver, then managing director of the Guinness breweries, tried to justify his mistake with the speed of the prey: according to him the golden plover was the fastest of the birds from game and that was why he had missed it. Not finding confirmation of his theory anywhere, he decided to do it himself. Thus the Guinness World Record, or Guinness Book of Records, was born. The book was first published in 1955: the idea was that it could be distributed both in pubs where Guinness was sold and in bookshops. It became a global success, translated into 20 different languages every year, and has sold over 130 million copies in more than 100 countries.
Guinness World Record Day, the strangest in its strange history
The book has collected a large number of oddities over the years, from the man with the most elastic skin or with the greatest number of needles inserted into his head, from the largest toothbrush in the world to the heaviest hot dog. In addition, of course, to the records set by male and female athletes.
To continue to interest the public, the company began to assign increasingly bizarre titles, like the record for the most plastic forks stuck in a beard or the number of toilet seats broken with one’s head in one minute.
The book’s sales have dropped lately, but the Guinness Book of Records continues to function. Even now, in the age of YouTube and TikTok, and the aspiration to catapult oneself to fame and riches via telephone. Clearly, coming up with gimmicks to keep up with the times.
He writes Imogen West Knightswhich he published an article on this topic in the Guardian last May. “Watch closely as the man attempts to break the record for the most spoons on one human body. Or the woman trying to become the world’s oldest salsa dancer. You may find yourself thinking that you are peering into the soul of humanity».
Marketing gimmicks, soft records and oddities
What has ended up in the World Guinness Record in recent years? A bit of everything. There are the found designed to help companies promote their brand, transforming curiosity into a marketing strategy. And there are the records assigned to the former president of Turkmenistan: Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, always obsessed with Guinness, wanted to give visibility to his repressive regime, thus contributing to its propaganda.
And there are records of those who are defined as “super record-breakers”. That is, people who continually try to break records, whose record is the number of records broken. Just take a task that isn’t particularly complex and commit to it? In a sense.
Between them, David Rush, an Idaho man who has broken more than 250 records since 2015. But also the Italian Silvio Sabba: owner of a gym on the outskirts of Milan is the man who currently holds the highest number of Guinness World Records. Sabba’s “particular genius” (writes the Guardian!) lies in identifying the so-called “soft records”: those that most people would ultimately be capable of beating, if they put in the effort. But he does it, and every time a little, so that he can possibly beat him again if someone tries to confront him. For Sabba, breaking the record is not so much a physical feat as a strategic one.
A taste. Here are 10, including Italians and the curious
1. Johanna Quaas at 97 years old in 2023 is the oldest gymnast in the world. A record recognized already in 2012 by the Guinness World Recordwhen the granny born in Hohenmölsen, in the land of Saxony-Anhalt, was already twirling without fear between parallel bars and rings.
2. Sister André, who was 118 years old, died last January the oldest woman in the world. Born in France in 1904, she lived in a retirement home in Toulon: although blind and immobilized, she had never lost her spirit. In April 2022 she entered the Guinness Book of Records
3. Sunday October 29, 2023, the “Lego sculpture” it represents the cities of Bergamo and Brescia, Capitals of Culture 2023 He obtained the Guinness World Record for the creation of a unique work: it is the largest lenticular mosaic in LEGO brick format in the world. AND 16.83 meters long, 3.06 meters high and composed of 811,008 LEGO inserts.
From the Simpsons to profiteroles
4. Guinness World Records awarded The Simpsons as the longest running animated series until today. From the first episode broadcast on April 19, 1987, the adventures of the most dysfunctional family on TV continued for 34 seasons, for a total of 755 episodes. In 2019 it broke the record as the animated series with the most Emmy Awards won. On April 22, 2020, it achieved another record, the one with the highest number of guest stars: there are at least 810 cameos by famous people in the episodes.
5. In September 2019 Latina entered the Guinness Book of Records thanks to a profiteroles 430 kilos. The dessert was prepared with nine thousand cream puffs, two hundred kilos of Chantilly cream and two hundred kilos of chocolate icing. Airola’s previous Swiss record of 253 kilos, set in March 2019, has been beaten.
Guinness World records, from the most expensive ice cream to the longest nails
6. The Japanese company Cellato presented Byakuya, taste of ice cream made with white truffle of Alba, parmigiano reggiano and kasu sake. The cost? Over 6200 per ball
7. In 1988, upon the death of his master, Blackie inherited $12.5 million, becoming the richest cat in the world. He was the last survivor of a litter of 15 cats and was the chosen one to inherit the fortune of his master, an antiques dealer who excluded his family from the will, devoting everything to the feline, or rather to the associations that should have looked after him.
8. The longer nails of the world belong to Diana Armstrong, 64 years old. They are about one meter and 30 centimeters long and have not been cut for 25 years. She herself said that she had always loved long nails, but decided not to cut them anymore after the death of one of her daughters in 1997.
9. TO 103 years old jumps with a parachute. The lively Rut Larsson is in the Guinness Book of Records for a tandem jump with a professional parachutist on the runway of the Motala airfield in Sweden
10. Lucky Diamond Rich he is the most tattooed man in the world. The record has been his for about ten years. He said it took approx a thousand hours of his life getting every inch of his skin covered in black ink.
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