The old, gray Guinness Book of World Records just ain't what it used to be.
I used to get the thing when it was a chunky, ratty-looking paperback with print so small you needed world-record bifocals just to read it.Now the book is all gloss and glitz - an oversize hardback with a cover in metallic printing that changes colors in the sun. It's full of color photographs, graphics, sassy writing and interviews with the likes of Michael Jordan.
It now costs $24.95 - another world record.
And when my edition came in the mail, I did what any normal soul would do. I checked the index for my name. (I wasn't in there). Then I looked under "Utah" (We weren't in there, either).
When I looked under "newspapers," however, I found a mother lode of info. Newspapers seem to be setting world records at record speed.
Here are a few "bests" that the Deseret News will be attempting to better in the years ahead.
- Oldest newspaper in the world: The Swedish Post och Inrikes Tidningar. It was founded in 1645 and just turned 350.
- Highest circulation: Pravda of the Soviet Union, founded in 1925. In May 1990, Pravda had a daily circulation of 21,975,000.
- Tiniest newspaper: the Bireswar-Smiriti of Bengal. It measures less than 2 inches high and one inch wide.
- Most pages: The Sept. 14, 1987, edition of The New York Times. It weighed 12 pounds and had 1,612 pages.
- Most Pulitzers: The New York Times .
- Longest-running comic strip: The Katzenjammer Kids. It was first published in the New York Journal on Dec.12, 1897, and has been going ever since. (In fact, the strip will celebrate its centennial next month).
Finally, here are a couple of personal marks I'm shooting for as a regular columnist:
- Most durable columnist: Mary MacArthur has been writing a column for the Oban Times in Scotland for 71 years.
- Most widely syndicated column: Ann Landers. She reaches 90 million readers with a column that appears in 1,200 newspapers.
- Lowest golf score recorded by a player using just one club: Thad Daber of the United States shot a 70 with his 6-iron at the 6,037-yard Lochrome Golf Club in North Carolina.
That last one I'm hoping to accomplish in my spare time, when I'm not setting the newspaper records.