"The Guinness Book of Records” is published - August 27th, 1955

On this day in 1955, the first copies of “The Guinness Book of Records” were printed and distributed for free in pubs across England and Ireland. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that flips through the pages of history to deliver
old news in a new way. I'm Gabeluesier, and today
we're examining the chain of events that turned an Irish

(00:20):
beer brewery into the most trusted name in world record keeping.
The day was August twenty seventh, nineteen fifty five. The
first copies of the Guinness Book of Records were printed

(00:41):
and distributed for free in pubs across England and Ireland.
A clever bit of marketing on the part of the
Guinness Brewery, the book was billed as a way to
help settle friendly disagreements among patrons. It proved so popular
that many copies went missing from their home pubs, prompting
Guinness to begin selling the book later that fall. The

(01:03):
first commercial edition of the Guinness Book of Records was
released in early October, and by Christmas time it had
become a best seller. Known today as the Guinness World
Records Book, the now annual publication is distributed in more
than one hundred countries, where it continues to help settle
bets and end arguments among trivia buffs of all ages.

(01:27):
The book's origin story began with an Irish hunting trip
in nineteen fifty one. On an unknown day that November,
the managing director of Guinness Brewery, Sir Hugh Beaver, was
out shooting with some friends in County Wexford, Ireland. The
group tried and failed to bag a game bird known
as the Golden plover, and the embarrassing miss led Beaver

(01:50):
to conclude that the plover must be the fastest game
bird in all of Europe. Other members of the party
disagreed with him, but after scouring through Beaver's extensive home library,
they were unable to find a definitive answer one way
or the other. The inability to settle this debate nod
at Sir Beaver, and he knew he probably wasn't the

(02:13):
first to feel that way. Similar arguments were surely playing
out every night in the same Irish and British pubs
where Guinness beer was served. With that realization in mind,
Beaver decided to help out his patrons and promote his
business by providing a trusted resource for fact based answers
right there in the bar. British runner and future politician

(02:37):
Chris Chataway happened to work for Guinness at the time,
and he put Beaver in touch with two of his
old university friends, twin brothers, Norris and Ross mcwherder. They
had both sprinted with Chataway at Oxford and had since
founded a London based fact finding agency that provided information
and statistics to newspapers. In September of ninth, teen fifty four,

(03:01):
the mcworders were invited to discuss the proposition of compiling
a book of records for publication. According to company legend,
the Guinness board tested the brother's knowledge by asking them
to name the language with the fewest irregular verbs. They
immediately gave the correct response, which is Turkish, and were
duly commissioned on the spot. What the brothers signed up

(03:24):
for was no easy task. First, they had to identify all,
or at least most, of the questions that seemed most
likely to come up in a social setting, and then,
for the truly tricky part, they had to hunt down
all the correct answers. To do this, the mcworders corresponded
with experts in a variety of fields, from astrophysics to zoology. Then,

(03:48):
once their extensive fact gathering mission was complete, the brothers
wrote up all their findings. That final phase of the
project was the most intensive. It took thirteen and ns
and half ninety hour weeks, including weekends, to put all
the various records together. Finally, on August twenty seventh, nineteen

(04:09):
fifty five, the very first copies of the Guinness Book
of Records were printed, bound and given away free of charge. Initially,
Guinness produced just fifty thousand copies of the slim one
hundred ninety eight page volume, which had supplied to pubs
throughout Ireland and Britain. In an impressive display of forethought,

(04:30):
the book's covers were made waterproof to help guard them
against the inevitable spills, but alas there was no way
to protect them from being stolen by customers. The growing
calls for replacement copies convinced Guinness that what had started
out as glorified marketing material might actually have retail possibilities.

(04:52):
The editors got right back to work, and on October third,
nineteen fifty five, the Guinness Book of Records appeared on
store shelf in the UK for the first time, following
swift sales through the holiday season. In American edition of
the book was released the following year. It was quickly
followed by editions for a host of other countries, and

(05:14):
pretty soon the mcwerders found themselves traveling the globe to
research and verify new records. The brothers would continue to
edit and consult on new editions of the book for
the rest of their lives. In nineteen seventy four, the
Guinness Record Book hit a milestone when it became the
top selling copyright book in history, allegedly outsold only by

(05:37):
the Bible, the Quran and Chairman Mao's Little Read Book.
In two thousand one, the owners of Guinness decided to
sell off all assets not directly related to the brewery,
including the rights to the world's foremost record book. The
new owner was allowed to continue using the iconic Guinness name,

(05:58):
but the title was tweaked ever so slightly from the
Guinness Book of Records to simply Guinness World Records, which
it's still called today. Over the last seven decades, a
new edition of the book has been released just about
every year, both to update records that have been broken
and to report on all new ones. The scope of

(06:21):
the records has also grown remarkably broad in that time,
covering achievements in sports, engineering, science and technology, arts and entertainment,
as well as a host of strangely specific superlatives. For instance,
there are records for the world's largest kidney stone, which
is five point two six inches by four point one

(06:42):
five inches, and for the most jelly eaten with chopsticks
in one minute, which is one pound six ounces. Every
claim submitted to Guinness, no matter how ridiculous, is meticulously
checked and authenticated by an in house team. The company
receives about a thousand of these applications every week, but

(07:04):
the vast majority, about ninety two per cent of them
are rejected due to a lack of evidence. A handful
of records have also been retired over the years due
to ethical concerns, including heaviest pet and most hamburgers eaten
in a single sitting. And while many records are frequently broken,

(07:24):
like most tennis balls held in one hand or oldest
living person, there are others, like Elon Musk's largest loss
of personal Fortune, that most people would rather not break. Amazingly,
there are even a few records still standing from the
book's first edition way back in nineteen fifty five. For example,

(07:46):
the highest grossing movie adjusted for inflation, is still Gone
with the Wind with just under three and a half
billion dollars. The Guinness Book itself is also a world
record holder, with more than one hundred and fifty million
copies sold since nineteen fifty five, it's the best selling
annual publication in history. Oh and in case you're curious,

(08:10):
the question of Europe's fastest game bird was never taken
up by Guinness, as the book focuses purely on world records.
The most likely answer, though, according to Guinness, is the
red breasted merganser, which has a recorded level flying speed
of eighty one miles per hour. That makes the merganser
the fastest game bird in the world, and, since Europe

(08:34):
is one of its native habitats, the fastest there as well.
I'm Gay, Blues Gay, and hopefully you now know a
little more about history today than you did yesterday. If
you'd like to keep up with the show, you can
follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI HC Show,

(08:57):
and if you have any comments or suggestions, feel free
to send them my way by writing to This Day
at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to kazb Bias for producing
the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll see
you back here again tomorrow for another day in history class.