The Guinness Book of Weird Records

On the evening of Saturday, November 10th, 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver of Zackary Farms shot a pigeon in the ass. At the time, he was out pot-shotting on The North Slob by the river Stanley, in the easterly westness of Southern Ireland. The shot traveled through the pigeon, and carried on to hit a dove sitting on a nearby fig tree, two butterflies on the wing, and the neck of his hunting partner, Sir Edmond Wistledick III. Later that evening at the hunting lodge, Sir Hugh marveled at his highly unusual shot while Wistledick gurgled along in agreement, holding a mottled kerchief to his punctured esophagus.

This quickly started an argument at the lodge over who held the record for the most things shot at one time. Sir Hugh thought he might have set a new record, while other drinkers weighed in with fantastical stories of shotgun mishaps at the rookery or the time Walter Cranabble shot an entire tank of lobsters during a melee at a seafood restaurant.

Dissatisfied with his inability to prove the greatness of his shot (in addition to the tiresome and endless debates with his wife over whether or not she was the fattest person in the world), Sir Hugh went to his friends at the local fact-checking agency, Crampit & Crammit, with his idea for compiling a book of world records for doing stupid things. Though they never doubted Sir Hugh's expertise on the subject, Crampit and Crammit thought his idea of publishing the book on the backs of a collectable series of beer cans was a bit tacky… even if he did work for Guinness. They agreed to participate, as long as the book was published on paper. Sir Hugh reluctantly agreed, even though paper doesn't hold much beer at all.

The first edition of the Guinness Book of World Records was published in 1954, and most of its 198 pages were devoted to records held by Sir Hugh Beaver himself. The rest was dedicated to records Sir Hugh wasn't competing for, but still followed closely (Biggest Tits, Most Times Falling Down the Same Well, Most Likely to Have Sex with Sir Hugh Beaver if He Asked, Class Clown, etc…). Realizing they had a goldmine on their hands, but for the huge jackass blocking the shaft, William Crampit and Arthur Crammit locked Sir Hugh in a pantry and told everyone he'd gone on safari. Over the next few years they refined and expanded the Guinness Book, developing it into a perennial bestseller that would eventually rank behind only The Pop-Up Bible and The Lose Weight Doing Nothing Diet on the all-time bestsellers list.

Crampit and Crammit proceeded to travel around the world, noting records where they found them and taking pictures of anyone they could find wearing weird extendo neck-rings and fat people riding motorcycles. When they got back to their offices they were greeted by a man who was, for no discernable reason, pulling four loaded buses with his teeth. They weren't sure what the buses were loaded with, and were understandably afraid to ask. The man was so frightening, in fact, that they put him in the book immediately just to get him off the premises. Little did they know they were opening some kind of freak-filled floodgate, and within the week their offices were stuffed to the rafters with every no-hair-cutting, long-fingernailed, lightbulb-eating mental patient in twelve counties.

Crampit and Crammit, no fans of having their spleens eaten or their eyeballs pulled like taffy, folded like a laminated map. Before they knew it, all of their precious "Fastest Bird" and "Tallest Post Office" records were pushed to the back of the book, buried under an avalanche of morbidly obese twins, turban-wearing weirdos who have sat in the same spot their entire lives, and insomniacs who stay up all night writing thousands of words on a grain of rice.

Every year since then the famed Guinness Book has grown like a weird tumor that started out interesting but is now placing its own orders for take-out. Determined and unbalanced individuals the world over have spawned new categories yearly in an effort to be remembered for anything at all, even if it's eating a shopping cart while wearing a beard of bees. As an interesting side note, Sir Hugh Beaver re-appeared around this time, claiming the record for most years spent living inside a pantry.

Eventually Guinness sold its rights for the book to the Robert Ripley Corporation of Believe it or Not! fame, a natural fit since they had more experience and expertise in freak-wrangling. Fans rejoiced as the long-standing bans on ant eating and penis size records were finally lifted, and Crampit and Crammit regained use of their hot tub at long last.

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