Today is the anniversary of an alcohol company deciding to go out of their way to solve arguments and accidentally creating a standard for human achievement. First published today in 1955, The Guinness Book of Records was created after a managing director for Guinness Beer got into an argument about what the fastest game bird in Europe was and found there weren't any resources with an answer. He found some guys to put together this hypothetical record book he wished he had during the argument, and it ended up a best seller.
Nowadays it's called the The Guinness Book of World Records, and it truly is international in both record collection and distribution. It's also known for having people do oddly specific tasks just so they can say they did it faster than anyone else, but at some point that kinda becomes a sport in itself. They've even made several TV shows out of the oddly specific records being broken. And it all started with a bird argument.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Between this and the Busch Gardens theme park chain starting with the addition of a bird garden to an Anheuser-Busch brewery tour, I’m starting to think the brewery business is an elaborate front for some sort of bird mafia.]
Do you think WSTH will ever hold any records?