‘Guinness World Records 2024’ packed with fascinating facts and surprising finds; WIN one of 10 copies!

Some people require a lot of incentive to practise being good at something – be it in sport, entertainment and especially career, money and status are just two of the driving forces that keep us keeping on. Other folks don’t need much incentive at all – they just love doing particular things. It is people in this latter category whom we truly admire and who, deservedly, make it into the pages of Guinness World Records.

The latest instalment Guinness World Records 2024 is a massive compendium on record-breaking antics that is sure to leave readers in awe.

While a post-pandemic lull and near-recession state might have dulled the motivation of millions, there are plenty of examples in this hefty tome of folks who have chosen to get on with life, do what they love, and prove that they’re brilliant at it.

As for nature – in the face of global warming, over-population of the human race, and near-extinction of some of the animal kingdom, it continues to fight back and show off its strength, beauty and resilience, so it makes sense for GWR to provide plenty of space for the natural realms, as well.

Gloriously illustrated throughout, Guinness World Records 2024 makes for an attractive coffee table book – but don’t just leave it on the table looking pretty; get into these amazing record-breaking stories! The book is packed with stacks of head-scratching, record-breaking anecdotes along with facts about everything from natural phenomena to technological marvels.

On the nature / marine front, for example, you’ll discover that largest freshwater fish is an astonishing 300-kg in weight, this being the female stringray collected from the Mekong River in Cambodia; the largest glacier is nearly 14million square kilometres (the Antarctic Ice Sheet); and the oldest cat, Flossie, has lived for 26 years and 316 days (at time of print).

On the science and tech front, we were surprised to learn that there are paragraphs in GWR that pay tribute to such weird and wonderful feats as ‘largest animal-shaped lighthouses’, ‘most powerful earthquake recorded on another planet’, and ‘longest time inside a tropical cyclone by an uncrewed aircraft’.

Of course, with our connection to all things pop culture, it’s the arts and media section we’ve thumbed through the most, and we were surprised to learn that The Last of Us has become the most critically acclaimed TV videogame adaptation; and that the largest Game Boy, an upscaled version of the classic handheld console, measures 1.01 metres tall and 0.62 metres wide. The latter was created by engineering student Ilhan Unal of Belgium who ensured every original released Game Boy cartridge can be played on it!

In music, it appears it was all about Taylor Swift these past 12 months. She has won the most American Music Awards, nabbing 40 to date, and scored the most number of weeks on the US albums chart – five, each with a different album. On November 5, 2022, Swift locked down the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 charts with tracks from her No. 1 album Midnights. Also, since the resurgence of vinyl, Midnights has become the US’s fastest-selling vinyl LP within a week, shifting 575,000 copies.

There are tens of other wins by Taylor in this year’s GWR but we’ll leave it to her squillions of fans to discover every little bit.

Other fascinating finds for us include the fact that RuPaul’s Drag Race has been the most in-demand reality TV series, with 22.1 more downloads than the average reality show, while the most viewed show on stream TV in just one week was Wednesday which registered an impressive 411,290,000 hours of viewing in seven days of dropping.

As you’d expect, most inserts in GWR are short and sweet, but there are some profiles that veer more toward feature-length, these being editorials on inductees into the Guinness World Records Hall of Fame. This year’s inductees include music icon Elton John, wheelchair-tennis star Shingo Kunieda, legendary basketballers the Harlem Globetrotters, and the world’s longest-serving female monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

The great thing about each updated GWR is that you get to pick and choose what you want to read about, at any given time. Want to delve deeper into history? There’s a whole section for that. Keen on aquatic life and outdoor adventure? Sections for those, too.

If you’re looking for the biggest, the brightest, the highest, the strongest, heck – even the littlest, they’re all laid bare here.

Lisa Andrews & Antonino Tati

‘Guinness World Records 2024’ is available in hardback RRP $46.99, published through Pan Macmillan Australia.

GIVEAWAY! WIN ONE OF 10 COPIES OF ‘GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS 2024’

Courtesy of Pan Macmillan Australia, Cream has ten (10!) copies of ‘Guinness World Records 2024’ to give away. To try winning the big book, email your name, address and the Subject heading ‘Guinness World Records 2024’ to cream@pobox.com no later than 5pm AWST, Friday 29th September, 2023. There’s only one prerequisite; you’ve got to have Liked our Facebook page here.

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