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Miscellaneous Jottings

This page is intended to be a home for snippets of interesting information about the Guinness Book of Records that, quite frankly, we don't know where else to put. Please send us any more miscellany that you may have.

  • The first copy of the book was bound on a Saturday.

  • Compared to the average wage at the time each edition was published, this year's new edition will probably be the least expensive edition ever (especially with the competitive nature of online booksellers and chains). The previous most affordable edition was probably the 11th edition in 1964.

  • Some of the editions - 19th (1972) to 30th (1983) - published by Redwood Press have a number of dots near the publisher's information. We originally believed these to be print-run marks, but recent information is that they are bindery marks - the number of dots indicating which company bound that particular copy. We have seen up to 6 dots, indicating that 6 different binderies were used.

  • The 19th edition shows that the brothers had a sense of humour: "... we do not opine on ... the most formidable mother-in-law, only the woman with the greatest girth or the organ (or indeed the mother-in-law) generating the most decibels".

  • The 21st Edition from 1974 was produced using the "perfect binding" technique. Unfortunately, many copies proved that it wasn't.

  • The hands in the third picture on page 166 of the 23rd Edition are those of Jacqui Gould.

  • On 24th October 1979, Guinness Superlatives honoured Paul McCartney with a dinner held at Les Ambassadeurs Club in London. McCartney subsequently appeared on the cover of the 27th Edition.

  • The brothers were obsessed by detail and accuracy, which seemed on occasion to lead to a need to fiddle unnecessarily with chapter titles and order.

  • The ISBNs given in the 21st U.S. Edition are incorrect - they are the ISBNs for the 20th Edition.

  • The Facts on File Guinness Book of Records 1992 is the 30th U.S. Edition, but the Guinness Book of Records 1993 is the 32nd U.S. Edition. Anyone know where the 31st U.S. Edition went?

[Where an opinion is expressed, it is based on our "reading between the lines" of the books in our collection.]