World Records aren’t set every day, but world records for new types of things can be. Whether you’re trying to spend the most time hovering a table tennis ball over your mouth (6.35 seconds is the current record) or spend the longest time holding your breath (22 minutes, held by Stig Severinsen) Guinness World Record Day encourages you to stretch the ends of human endurance and creativity, and set that new world record!
History of Guinness World Record Day
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.
The book was hugely successful, and thus the legacy that is the Guinness Book of World Records was born and has continued to be reprinted every year, ever since.
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!
How to celebrate Guinness World Record Day
In fear of being redundant, one celebrates Guinness World Record Day by attempting to break a world record! Some of them you won’t be able to do in one day, so consider this holiday to be your starting gun.
After all, one such record is for the “Longest continually supported and updated Game”, an honor which goes to the unique wilderness survival game Unreal World .
You can also head on over to Guinness World Records to find out what the latest records are, or just spend some time looking up things like the fastest land mammal, or longest ping pong game ever held!
