Guinness World Record Day was established to give people a day to focus on challenging existing records or putting forth a new record to be put into the books. That latter is for the truly ambitious, but it’s entirely possible!
In 1951 an argument was held between Sir Hugh Beaver and his fellow hunting mates in North Slob in County Wexford, Ireland. What was the argument about you ask? Which bird was the fastest game bird in Europe, of course.
While we now know that the fastest game bird is the plover, it cast light on an issue about available reference books. None of them compared flight speeds of various birds, something we can’t imagine he was terribly surprised by. This was something that Sir Hugh was determined to change, and change it he did.
He got together with Norris and Ross McWhirter to create the first ever compilation of record, well, everything they could get their hands on. So it was that the first 1000 copies of the Guinness Book of Records were printed in 1954.
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