OLD WORLD RECORDS
When can world records seem downright quaint? When they're part of the original Guinness compilation. Just check out these numbers from 1955:
• The most expensive perfume was about $51 an ounce; now it's more than $1,300.
• The largest bank robbery to date had netted about $884,000; a recent Brazilian heist yielded $69.8 million.
• The largest national debt belonged to (surprise!) the United States at $271 billion; it now is almost $13 trillion.
Yes, times have changed. But in its own way, a new reprint of "The Guinness Book of Records" is, well, timeless. It's available for about $40, plus shipping, only at www.guinnessworldrecords.com. And it's filled with fascinating factoids, such as an account of a Copenhagen toad reaching 54 years of age.
But some things never change: The heaviest man (1,000 pounds) and woman (850 pounds) to that point came from the good ol' U.S. of A.
An extra bonus are the "plates," pages of photos displaying the Chubb Crater in Canada ("largest meteoric scar") and the Traber Troupe riding motorbikes on a high wire over the Alps. Alas, there's not a snapshot of the Smith's Arm, a Dorset pub measuring 10 feet wide and 4 feet high.
Now there's a bar that would bring any man to his knees.
