One of the most popular books that come out every year is the Guinness book of records. This is now more commonly known as the Guinness world records. This popular book chronicles things such as the best and worst or the longest and shortest or many other recordable facts from throughout the world.
This book is accredited to the Irish twins Ross and Norris McWhirter who actually published the first Guinness book of records in Britain as far back as 1955. What a lot of people do not actually realize though is that the book is commissioned by a famous brewery in Ireland namely the Guinness brewery.
Guinness came up with the idea of making the book in order to further promote their product and bring more revenue into their company. The book initially was just a way of letting people know the answers too many of the bar bets that were being run at the time.
It is rumored that the original idea came in 1951 when a certain Sir Hugh Beaver, who was at the time a managing director of the Guinness Empire was participating in a shooting party. He somehow got into an exchange of words with another person about Europe’s fastest bird. They argued about whether it was the Koshin Golden Plover or the Grouse.
Whilst he was trying to find the answer from his reference books in his Castlebridge House library, he suddenly realized that the books were a little vague with the answer.
Then a thought struck his mind that perhaps a book like this could in fact be quite interesting. This was the start of the Guinness book of records.
This annual book has sold millions of copies since it was first published in 1955. Funnily enough it now holds a record itself as the most popular and best selling of all the copyrighted serial books in the world.
One unenviable record that this book holds is that it is book most likely to be stolen from public libraries in the United States.