Our history
Guinness World Records - originally the Guinness Book of Records - the ultimate authority on record-breaking achievements, started out as an idea for a book of facts to solve arguments in pubs.
View our timeline
The idea came about in the early 1950’s when Sir Hugh Beaver (1890—1967), Managing Director of the Guinness Brewery, attended a shooting party in County Wexford.
There, he and his hosts argued about the fastest game bird in Europe, and failed to find an answer in any reference book.*
In 1954, recalling his shooting party argument, Sir Hugh had the idea for a Guinness promotion based on the idea of settling pub arguments and invited the twins Norris (1925—2004) and Ross McWhirter (1925—75) who were fact-finding researchers from Fleet Street to compile a book of facts and figures.
Guinness Superlatives was incorporated on 30 November and the office opened in two rooms in a converted gymnasium on the top floor of Ludgate House, 107 Fleet Street.
A body of elected commoners
This is a Babylonian type code of law that would date all the way back to the times of ancient Mesopotamia (around 1754 B.C.). This also known to be one of the world's most oldest writing that can still be understood.
