Getting Into the Guinness Book of World Records

15 May 2011

Children in New Delhi, India brush their teeth together in an attempt to break a world record for most people brushing their teeth in multiple venues in 2007

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Christopher Cruise.

BARBARA KLEIN: And I'm Barbara Klein. This week on our program, we talk about getting into Guinness. We hear from a man who got into the famous record book twice -- and wrote his own book about how he did it. And we hear from another man who holds the record for holding the most records.

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CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: The Guinness Book of Records was first published in August of nineteen fifty-five in Britain. The idea came from Sir Hugh Beaver, then managing director of Guinness Brewery. He could not find the answer to what seemed like a simple question: What was Europe's fastest game bird? He thought other people might like a book that could answer such questions and settle arguments.

Today the name is just Guinness World Records. The main offices are in London but the book is now owned by a big Canadian company. The Jim Pattison Group also owns the Ripley's Believe It or Not museums.

BARBARA KLEIN: The Guinness book is one of the most widely read books ever published. More than one hundred million copies have been sold in almost forty languages. A new edition is published every year.