The Guinness Book of Superlatives: The Original Book of Fascinating Facts (First edition)

The book that started it all-filled with fascinating facts and stats from the mid-1950s world.

Imagine the world before Google, when books were the source for facts at your fingertips. Originally published in 1956, The Guinness Book of Superlatives is the very first book in a series that would one day become one of the most well-known and trusted brands in the world-The Guinness Book of World Records.

This is the original fun and informative edition, which gathered world facts and records from the year of its publication and prior. Included within are world records and facts from the sectors of:

Science * Politics * Economics * Art * Architecture * Engineering * Accidents and disasters * Human achievements * The natural world * and many more!

Take an entertaining journey into a time when the US population was about half of what it is now; the highest salary ever made by an American governor was $50,000; and the divorce rate in New Jersey was 0.9%. (Of course, some records still stand, such as the earliest appendectomy.) This fascinating reference is a unique data dive into a not-so-distant, yet very different, world.