The Guinness Book of Records was created to settle pub arguments.
The idea came from Sir Hugh Beaver, managing director of the Guinness brewery; twins Norris and Ross McWhirter compiled it in 1955, and it was a bestseller by Christmas.
More amazing facts
- 1954 In 1954 'the fastest man on Earth' was a doctor.
- 1955 Einstein's brain weighed 1,230 grams, well within the normal human range.
- 1955 · 1957 The Frisbee is named after a bakery and started out as the 'Pluto Platter'. Yale students tossed empty pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company, so in 1957 the maker renamed its plastic disc the Frisbee.
- 1955 · 1967 Sweden switched to driving on the right despite a referendum.
- 1955 · 1956 · 1957 Artificial intelligence is older than the Space Age. The term was coined in 1955 for the Dartmouth workshop held in the summer of 1956, while the first satellite flew only in October 1957.
- 1956 In autumn 1956 the world watched two crises at once: the Anglo-French landing at the Suez Canal and Soviet tanks in Budapest.