Fastest Bird? Question Inspired Guiness Book

In its fifty years the book has sold more than a hundred million copies, which makes it the biggest selling copyright book in history, said to have been outsold only by the Bible, the Koran and Chairman Mao. Now called Guinness World Records, it sells about 3.5 million copies a year in twenty-three languages in a hundred countries. Meanwhile the world's population has swelled from a mere 2.56 billion to 6.31 billion, but the latest edition points out that there are some records which still stand, even after fifty years. Irving Berlin's White Christmas is still the world's best-selling song. The tallest man who ever lived is still an American named Robert Pershing Wadlow, who in 1940 was measured at 8ft 11.1 in. The world's largest office building is still the Pentagon, completed in 1943 with a total of 17.5 miles of corridors and 7,754 windows.