Guinness World Records 2013: A brief review

It has been quite a time that the Guinness World Records 2013 (GWR 2013) was released into the public. I myself bought the book and gave it a try. I bought the book from Flipkart, and as always it had been well-packed and the delivery time was less than it was mentioned on the page. It's worth 1600 bucks, but the content is worth the money. I'll give a short review about the book.

At the beginning, as usual there's the Editor's letter and the Contents. The Editor of this year is Craig Grendlay, and you wouldn't be surprised he's holding the post for years. In the "Editor's letter" he acknowledges the support received, and the enthusiasm with which people try to beat records, and such. It ends with some note of hope that may other people continue to create records for the world. At the end, he signs off.

There are 12 topics on which the records are based upon. They are: Space, Green Earth, Animals, Humans, Human achievements, Adventure, World tour, Society. Engineering, Science, Entertainment and Sports. There are further sub-divisions. The book contains about 287 pages. New significant additions are the 3D App and 3,000 new records. The editor has made a satirical comment of the index page, saying "We're going to need a bigger book". I feel that the comment was placed intentionally to motivate more people to try to beat records.

Did you know that the England cricket player Andrew Flintoff is a regular at breaking records? For instance, he faced 19 deliveries in 1 minute, which awards him a world record. He also records the fastest 100m in a pedalo, which he covered in 1 min 58 seconds. This is just a starter fact. This book has lot's of diversified records which will set make you say "Whoa! I can't believe it!"

The Space section concentrates mostly on human achievements in space. There are well labeled photos on space suits, space missiles, space rockets and what not. It even has a detailed explanation on how do astronauts do toilet in space. Well, you'd be shocked, when you know that a single space toilet costs $23.4 million US Dollars! That makes it the world's costliest toilet.

Coming to "Green Earth", it questions on a fundamental topic: How much climate change can we survive? It has world records on nature- like, the most lonely plant is a Solitary Norwegian Spruce, over 100 years old, on the Campbell Islands, whose nearest companion is 222 km away on the Auckland Islands. Also did you know, the most dangerous tree is Manchineel, which is so acidic that if it comes in contact with the skin, it would cause an eruption of blisters?

Next chapter, "Animals", start with the world's largest living snake, measuring 7.67 metres. The 3-dimensional images in this chapter are of Shark, and a Hercules Baboon spider. It has records listed for the records that animals break.

Next comes the Human and Human achievements chapter. I feel this is the most interesting chapter on this book. It deals with records broken by humans- living or dead- like the shortest man, the fastest runner, world's supercentenarians: The one's who have crossed 110 years of age. The world's oldest female with a verified age is Jeanne Louisse Calment, born in France in the year 1875. She died in the year 1997. The book states that she led an extremely active life. One of the most fascinating, awesome records is of Patrick Bertoletti (USA). He holds the record of eating 40 grapes, 3 doughnuts, 1.2 kg yogurt, 3 chocolate bars, 36 garlic cloves, 8 bananas, 30 olives, six jelly sandwiches, 167 grams of shrimp and seven Cream-filled biscuits within a whopping 1 minute! Oh my God, it was tough to gulp down the information to my stomach.

The World Tour chapter deals with short facts of countries from various continents. An example is: (Africa)- David Livingstone named the Victoria fall in honour of the queen of UK, but locals called it Mosi-oa-Tunya (Smoke that thunders).

The next chapter in the line, "Society" lists records by people of various communities. Here, India has broken many records. The featured record is the world's largest school comprising of 39,437 students: It is none other than the City Montessori School in Lucknow, India. Amazing, isn't it? It also has the world's most richest people in history. One fact given here is that even if we spend 1000 (About Rs. 80,000) euros per day, it'd take us  2,739 years to spend 1 billion euros.

Engineering takes us on a tour of the world's massive structures, and engineering feats achieved. Examples of some records are: The tallest pyramid is the Great Pyramid of Giza. The world's tallest hotel is Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel which is 601 m high. Science tell us about recent developments in the field of science.

The last "Sports" has records of players. In the cricket section, Indians feel proud- it's listed Sachin Tendulkar as the greatest cricket player of all times, with 33,000+ runs in all forms of the cricket game. Other records are of football, Rugby and so on.

In short, the 2013 Guinness World Records is a must-buy. Though it costs about Rs. 1600 in general, try to get it. It'll amaze you. And moreover, it's a GWR!