Records book reaches its own milestone
THE LONGEST nails, the heaviest twins and the tallest man are just some of the odd records that have featured in the Guinness World Records book which is celebrating its 60th anniversary today.
The idea for the book began back in the early 1950s when Sir Hugh Beaver, then managing director of the Guinness Brewery, attended a shooting party in County Wexford and got into an argument about the fastest game bird in Europe, with no answer to be found in any reference book.
Sir Hugh decided a Guinness promotion could be tied-in to the idea of settling pub arguments and invited the twins, Norris and Ross McWhirter, to compile a book of facts and figures.
The first edition of what was then called the Guinness Book of Records was subsequently published in 1955, since when more 134m copies have been sold in more than 100 countries.
A vast array of records, many of them bizarre, have found their way into the book. Yorkshire holds claim to a number of them, including the longest lasting rainbow – six hours - recorded over Wetherby on March 14, 1994.
The largest space hopper race belongs to Sheffield with 771 participants taking part in an event organised by cancer charities at the Don Valley Bowl on July 25, 2010.
Further afield, the world’s longest fingernails, claimed by Lee Redmond from Salt Lake City in the United States of America, were each up to a metre-long - or 3.2ft - until a car accident in 2009 when she lost all 10 nails.
The USA also claimed the world’s heaviest twins, Billy Leon and Benny Loyd McCrary, who performed as tag-team wrestlers and weighed more than 100 stone combined.
In contrast, the skinniest waist was awarded to Cathie Jung, another American, who in 1999 had a corseted waist measuring just 15 inches.
And the USA also previously claimed the tallest man in the world with Don Koehler, who died in 1981, measured at 8ft 2ins.