The Guinness World Records is named after the Guinness Brewery in Ireland. In the 1950s, Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, was on a hunting trip and became involved in an argument about the fastest game bird in Europe. He realized that there were no reference books that could settle such disputes and thought that a book containing facts and figures could be useful and entertaining.
Beaver then contacted Norris and Ross McWhirter, who had compiled a book called The McWhirter Guide to the World’s Records in 1951, and they were hired to create the first Guinness Book of Records. The first edition of the book was published in 1955, and it quickly became a bestseller. The book was renamed the Guinness World Records in 2000 to reflect its global reach and popularity.
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