Origin of Guinness World Records

I think I would have known this but I didn't. We often buy some Guinness around Christmas time. It may have been because Jim's Scottish grandfather liked a Guinness.

From Interesting Facts 'Guinness World Records started out as a Guinness Brewery promotion intended to help settle bar bets. In 1954, Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of Guinness, thought up a way to reduce pub disputes so bartenders could focus on pouring his company’s signature beers. He suspected that every bar could benefit from a book filled with verified facts and stats about subjects that might arise mid-conversation over a drink. Two events in particular prompted his decision: Earlier in the decade, he and fellow guests at a hunt in Ireland memorably argued about Europe’s fastest game bird, which they had no means of identifying. Then, on May 6, 1954, English athlete Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes, causing public interest in records-related news to surge. Norris McWhirter had served as the stadium announcer during Bannister’s historic run, and Beaver hired both him and his identical twin, Ross McWhirter — another sports journalist — to assemble The Guinness Book of World Records. At the time, the pair had already begun working at a London-based agency that supplied facts to newspapers and advertisers.'