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All records from Guinness World Records
Shortest War: British ships bombed the island of Zanzibar at 9 am on August 27, 1896. At 9.45 am Zanzibar surrendered, after the shortest war in history. Germany and Britain had been engaged in territorial disputes over the small island of Zanzibar, off the east African coast, for several years. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, the island had gradually come under British control. Throughout this time the Sultan of Zanzibar obediently carried out British commands. When the Sultan died in 1896, however, his second son seized the throne and, with German support, he declared himself the new Sultan. The British feared their German rivals would come to dominate Zanzibar and so they ordered the new Sultan to retire - or face the consequences. The Sultan refused to withdraw his claim to the throne. Instead he assembled 2,500 Arab soldiers and hastily re-commissioned an ancient bronze cannon, which had not been fired in anger since 1658. The British began bombarding the small island from a fleet of warships anchored offshore. The sultan had no effective means of retaliation and surrendered 45 minutes later, after being granted asylum at the island's German consulate.
Longest Continuous War: The longest war that could be described as continuous was the Thirty Years War, between various European countries from 1618-48. As a result, the map of Europe was radically altered.
Longest Irregular War: The so-called Hundred Years' War between England and France, which lasted from 1337 to 1453 (116 years), was in fact an irregular succession of wars rather than a single one.
Most Current Guinness World Records Held: The individual to hold the most current Guinness World Records is Ashrita Furman of Jamaica, New York, USA. Ashrita holds 20 official world records across a range of disciplines, including milk-bottle balancing, lunging, skipping, forward rolling, glass balancing, joggling, and, most recently, pushing an orange with his nose (fastest mile)! Since the 1970s, Mr. World Record has set over 80 Guinness World Records.
Ashrita Furman website
The following three films have each won 11 Oscars, the most won by a film:
Ben-Hur (1959): directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins and Haya Harareet. Tagline: The World's Most Honored Motion Picture. Plot Outline: When a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.
Source: IMDb
Titanic (1997): directed and written by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Tagline: Collide With Destiny. Plot Outline: Fictional romantic tale of a rich girl and poor boy who meet on the ill-fated voyage of the 'unsinkable' ship.
Source: IMDb
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003): directed by Peter Jackson and starring Elijah Wood (Frodo), Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) and Ian McKellen (Gandulf). Tagline: This Christmas the journey ends. Plot Outline: The former Fellowship of the Ring prepare for the final battle for Middle Earth, while Frodo & Sam approach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring.
Source: IMDb
Largest known prime number: The largest known prime number is (2 to the power of 20,996,011) -1. It was discovered by Michael Shafer (USA), a chemical engineering student at Michigan State University (USA), on November 17, 2003. Shafer was running software on his computer as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS. This prime number contains 6,320,430 digits.
Most accurate value of pi: As continuation of a long-running project, Yasumasa Kanada of the University of Tokyo has calculated the number pi to 1,241,100,000,000 decimal places. It has been done using an HITACHI SR8000/MPP computer
Pogo stick: a children's toy made of a long metal stick with a bar to hold across the top, and a large spring and a bar for your feet at the bottom, used to bounce around on.
Jumps on a Pogo Stick: The greatest number of consecutive jumps achieved on a pogo stick is 177,737, by Gary Stewart at Huntington Beach, California, USA on May 25-26, 1990. The attempt took him 20 hours and 20 minutes. Gary first tried a pogo stick in 1974, when he and his older brother, Dave, were given a dime-store model by a neighbor. Dave managed 31 jumps, and so Gary “stayed out in the garage until I could do more than 31." His determination eventually paid off and by 1985 he had set a record with 130,077 jumps in 17 hours, 26 minutes, which he went on to beat in 1990. And the reason for all this bouncing around? "Ever since I was in the first grade I would get a Guinness Book for Christmas every year. That book was my bible. Getting my name in it was like really an important thing to me. It was kind of a childhood dream."
Greatest Distance Jumped On A Pogo Stick: Ashrita Furman of Jamaica, New York, USA, set a pogo stick jumping distance record of 37.18 km (23.11 miles) in 12 hours 27 minutes on June 22, 1997 at Queensborough Community College Track, New York, USA. Ashrita holds the most Guinness World Records of any indiviual - sacking racing, brick carrying and underwater rope jumping are some of his other records.
Yesterday by The Beatles (Most Recorded Song): The most recorded song is "Yesterday" written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. From 1965 to January 1, 1986 some 1,600 versions of the song were made. The song was first recorded in June 1965 and released that August on the Help! album. It has been covered by artists such Elvis Presley, Boyz II Men, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, and Gladys Knight. The song reportedly came to McCartney in a dream. He woke up, went to the piano, turned on the tape recorder, and played the song. He then spent the next few weeks trying to figure out whether he'd heard the song before or just made it up in his sleep!
See lyrics
DB Burger Royale (Most Expensive Burger): "The burger patty consists of ground sirloin steak with a filling of boned short ribs braised in red wine, foie gras, preserved black truffles and a mirepoix [aromatic flavoring or seasoning] of root vegetables". "The bun is made to a special recipe which includes Parmesan and poppy seeds and is spread with fresh horseradish, tomato confit, fresh tomato, red onion and lettuce. But the extra special ingredients are the addition of fresh black Perigord truffles and truffle dressing."
Longest Palindrome: The longest known palindrome – a word that reads the same backwards or forwards – in any language is the 19-letter word saippuakivikauppias, which is Finnish for "a dealer in lye", meaning a seller of soap stone. The longest palindrome in the Oxford English Dictionary is the 12-letter tattarrattat, a nonce word (invented for a particular event or occasion) meaning rat-a-tat. The Irish author James Joyce used the word in Ulysses (1922): "I knew his tattarrattat at the door."
Longest Word In English With Each Letter Twice: "Unprosperousness", at 16 letters long, is the longest word in the English language in which each letter occurs at least twice. In the word "Sestettes", a musical term meaning pieces of music for six voices, each letter appears three times.
Shortest Word In English With All Five Vowels: "Eunoia", at six letters long, is the shortest word in the English language that contains all five main vowels. Taken from the French, it means "of well mind" and indicates a stable mental state, although another interpretation of the word is "beautiful thinking". It is also the title of a novel by the poet Christian Bok, in which each chapter is written using only one vowel. There are many seven-letter words with this property, including "adoulie", "douleia", "eucosia", "eulogia", "eunomia", "eutopia", "miaoued", "moineau", "sequoia", and "suoidea". Note: The word iouea is a genus of Cretaceous fossil sponges, although as scientific word not in common usage, it is not eligible for consideration.
Longest English Word Consisting Only Of Vowels: "Euouae", at six letters long, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. It is a medieval musical term that indicates the vowels of the syllables of "seculorum Amen," which ends the Latin hymn "Gloria Patri".
Longest Monosyllabic English Words: "Scraunched", meaning to crush or crush noisily, and the archaic word "strengthed", each 10 letters long, are the longest English words that are only one syllable long. There are more 9-letter words: "scratched", "screeched", "scrounged", "squelched", "straights", and "strengths".
Five fantastic book records!
1. An original four-volume subscriber set of J. J. Audubon's The Birds of America was auctioned for $8,802,500 (£5,739,000) by Christie's of New York in March 2000.
2. The most overdue library book was returned after 288 years! It was borrowed from a British university library in 1668 and was found elsewhere centuries later. The book was returned but no fine was charged!
3. British "head-balancer" John Evans once balanced a staggering 62 books on his head, weighing a total of 217 lb.
4. There's a crazy Japanese book called Chindogu. It means "weird tool" and is full of useless inventions, such as tiny dusters that slip onto a cat's paws, so it can clean surfaces as it walks around!
5. In 1991, Millie, US President George Bush's dog, earned $900,000 (£587,000) from her autobiography Millile's Book, an "under the table look at life in the Bush family". President Bush's own biography earned only $2,700 (£1,760)!
Most Remote City From The Sea: The most remote city from the sea is Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The city is about 2,500 km. (1,500 miles) from the nearest coastline.
Coldest Inhabited Village: The coldest inhabited village is Oymyakon, in Yakutia, eastern Siberia, Russia. Temperatures there can drop to as low as -70°C (-94°F). The average in January, the coldest month, is -50°C (-58°F). The town is in a valley surrounded by two high mountains that trap cold winter air and prevent warmer air getting in. Snow covers the ground from early autumn to mid spring.
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