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Guinness Book of World Records
The Guinness Book of World Records was the brainchild of Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of Guinness Brewing. In 1951, Beaver was at a party where he was asked to settle an argument among the partygoers. Beaver searched in his host's library for the answer to the issue that was in question, to no avail.
It occurred to Beaver that there must be numerous such "friendly arguments" going on nightly in pubs and inns throughout the British Isles, while patrons partook of Guinness stout. Beaver decided to produce a book that would settle these disagreements. With the backing of the brewery, Beaver commissioned Norris and Ross McWhirter, editors and statisticians in London, to compile a book of records. The first copy was published in Great Britain in 1955. The following year, The Guinness Book of World Records was published in the United States.
Every year since 1955, thousands of people from pole to pole have attempted great feats with one common goal: to make it into The Guinness Book of World Records. The winners are all here among the 10,000 records that cram these pages, along with amazing photographs, special features and interviews with many famous-and not so famous-people for whom Guinness has become a household word.
The 2001 edition will be published in 77 different countries in 38 different languages. Total sales of all editions worldwide passed 50 million in 1984, 75 million in 1994, and just last year passed the 100 million mark. The Guinness Book of World Records is the world's biggest-selling copyrighted book of all time. A fact may only become a Guinness World Record™ when it is tested, verified and elevated above all suspicion.
Ripley's Haunted Adventure
Once a flourishing business born out of the challenges facing the early inhabitants of San Antonio, the company once founded in 1913 by Elias Grimsby and Henry Streaper was in its early days a cornerstone of the San Antonio business community. Located in an old warehouse across from the Alamo, Grimsby and Streaper were known for their ingenuity and engineering wizardry. Many of their technological improvements raised casket making to a higher plane (pardon the pun).
It is recommended that children be accompanied by an adult.
Alas, by the late 1920's the treacheries of the new territories had been substantially reduced and the science of medicine had made major strides. By that time San Antonio even had its own doctor in residence.
The market for their caskets had waned. Rumors of certain questionable efforts by the company to increase their market share were never proven, as there were no known arrests related to the great numbers of people who had disappeared and who eventually showed up dead in the vicinity of the warehouse.
The last "nail in the coffin" (so to speak) came when the partners got into a feud regarding their internal business practices. The rumor on the street was that the feud revolved around the operations (again pardon the pun) in their production line previously reserved for raw materials.
Shortly after their irreconcilable differences, Grimsby and Streaper disappeared and the Casket Company closed due to a lack of business.
The warehouse fell into a state of disrepair and had it not been for the night watchman, Earnest Gooden, it might have become a site for urban redevelopment. Earnest labored for many years and struggled to preserve the site as a monument to the accomplishments of the two partners.
When Gooden mysteriously and unexpectedly disappeared in 1948, his grand child Billy Phillips stepped in to keep the building up as best he could. Even to this day, Billy remains loyal to the quest of locating his grand dad. No one in the neighborhood really believes Billy when he occasionally mentions that he thinks he has seen two figures that seem to resemble the descriptions of Grimsby and Streaper mysteriously moving through the building carrying a body that looks like his grand daddy.
In response to a periodic need for cash, and his insatiable need to find the truth about the mysterious disappearances, Billy is still giving personal tours of the old warehouse and shares some of his thoughts with the lucky few that dare to enter.
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