Back in 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, the Managing Director of Guinness, was desperate to come
up with an idea that would make him famous enough that people would stop making fun of
him for being named Hugh Beaver.
And one day, Hugh did the richest, whitest, most British thing anyone has ever done: got
into an argument at a shooting party about what was the fastest game bird in Europe––the
red grouse or the golden plover.
The answer, by the way, is nobody cares, but Hugh decided that there should be a book to
settle arguments about records, and so he made one: the Guinness World Records Book,
which began as a small bar book and ultimately grew into the definitive lifestyle guide for
bored 8-year-olds across the globe.
But this video isn’t about the records that are in the Guinness World Records book.
If you want to hear about those, you can read about them in some book whose name I forget.
This is about the records that Guinness refuses to put in their precious little book.
Now, the main category of unrecognized records is also the least interesting, and the one
you probably already kind of knew: overly specialized records.
You see, in addition to being standardizable, verifiable, and breakable, records must also
be interesting, and despite what the 100% real record for “most canned drinks opened
by a parrot in one minute,” would have you believe, Guinness typically won’t accept
a record if the criteria are overly specific.
That’s why there aren’t records for things like “most jokes about bricks on a semi-satirical
educational YouTube channel” or “most jokes about Brian from Real Engineering on
a semi-satirical educational YouTube channel” or “most bricks thrown at a semi-satirical
YouTuber by Brian from Real Engineering” which is a shame, because otherwise I’d
hold all of those records.
Another major reason Guinness won’t accept a record is if they feel it’s too dangerous,
but the specific rule is worded in a pretty interesting way: “Guinness World Records
will not monitor any records involving unsuitable activities or those which could cause potential
harm or danger to spectators,” which raises the question: what is an “unsuitable”
activity?
I mean, Guinness still monitors the record for “most live rattlesnakes held in mouth
for 10 seconds,” despite the fact that when I tried to break it, both my doctor and my
rattlesnakes found it pretty unsuitable.
It turns out, Guinness seems to have decided that “unsuitable” activities are not necessarily
the most dangerous records, but instead records that normal-ish people could be tempted to
actually try, and thus hurt themselves, whereas if you can manage to find a rattlesnake and
get it in your mouth, you’re probably qualified to be doing that.
One famous example of this sort of too-dangerous-for-normies record is “longest time gone without sleep,”
which Guiness discontinued in 1989.
Now, this was really bad news for Tony Wright, who stayed awake for 264 hours to beat the
record set by high schooler Randy Gardner in 1963, only for Guinness to respond that
they didn’t do that record anymore, but also that he hadn’t even broken the real
record which was actually set by a Finnish man named Toimi Soini in 1964.
The danger rule is also why Guinness won’t accept records regarding medically-invasive
procedures, speeding on public roads, or endurance records by those under age 16.
Around the same time in the late 1980s, Guinness started to become more concerned with their
influence on society, and also with their influence on how often they got sued, so they
began to crack down on a third category: records that promoted broader societal ills that they
didn’t want to be in the business of promoting.
Perhaps the most notable of these are “gluttony” records, which they also discontinued in 1989.
While they still monitor records for eating the most food in a short period of time—like
the current record for eating a 12-inch pizza in 23.62 seconds—they will no longer record
longer-term eating records like the famed 1880 meat-eating record of consuming an entire
roast ox in 42 days.
In a 1989 Associated Press article, Guinness editor Donald McFarlan explained their reasoning
as “we now regard these records as unhealthy and outmoded, in the light of growing concern
about health issues worldwide,” going on to say “if you have witnessed one of these
competitions, they are simply gross”––an absolutely flawless quote coming from a guy
whose book still actively monitors the record for “most milk squirted out of an eye.”
But it’s not just eating: Guinness discontinued all alcohol-drinking records in 1991 due to
concerns about rising alcoholism rates, which may have hurt book sales, but was fortunately
offset by additional Guinness beer profits thanks to the rising alcoholism rates.
In the same vein, they no longer monitor any records relating to tobacco, cannabis, or
nicotine, because they’re total narcs.
After putting the kibosh on human gluttony, Guinness eventually decided to tackle animal
gluttony as well—they discontinued all of their “heaviest pet” records in 1998,
as they feared it was encouraging owners to overfeed their pets in search of the enormous
fame and fortune that comes from the title “owner of the world’s heaviest ferret.”
But they still maintain records for height, length, and age for most animals, because
I’m not sure if I’d be able to go on living if I didn’t know that the world’s tallest
donkey is named Romulus.
In that same socially conscious vein, Guinness also discontinued “environmentally unsound”
records, mainly as a result of the hilariously colossal failure of Balloonfest ‘86, when
Clevelanders released about 1.5 million balloons into the air, clogging the land and waterways
of Northeast Ohio, forcing Burke Lakefront Airport to shut down, and interfering with
a Coast Guard search for two missing boaters who ended up dead.
But hey, it was the 80’s: how was anyone supposed to know that releasing one and a
half million latex bags into the sky could possibly harm the environment.
That’s the type of reasoning that could only come from a real expert in scientific
thinking.
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