123 Fun Facts About World Records

Which skyscraper did the Burj Khalifa overtake to become the world's tallest building?

Taipei 101 held the title from 2004 until the Burj Khalifa passed it; a 660-tonne steel ball hung near its top sways to offset the tower's movement in strong winds.

Who holds the record for the oldest person ever whose age has been fully authenticated?

Jeanne Calment of France lived 122 years and 164 days; a notary who agreed in 1965 to pay her monthly for her flat until she died paid for 30 years, then died before she did.

What is the fastest land animal?

Cheetahs have been reliably timed at just over 100 km/h (about 65 mph), the fastest of any land animal, but only for a few hundred metres; the pronghorn can hold its top speed far longer.

Which athlete holds the record for the most Olympic medals won by an individual?

Michael Phelps won 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold; he retired after London 2012, where he passed Larisa Latynina's record of 18, then came back to win five more golds in Rio.

What is generally considered the longest river in the world?

The Nile drains a basin that spans eleven countries on its way north to the Mediterranean, though it carries far less water than several shorter rivers.

What is the smallest independent state by area in the world?

Vatican City, an enclave inside Rome, became a state only in 1929, when the Lateran Treaty ended 59 years in which popes refused to leave the Vatican rather than accept Italian rule over Rome.

Who reached the summit of Everest with Tenzing Norgay in 1953, in the first confirmed ascent?

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top on 29 May 1953; a coded message carried the news to London in time to be announced on the morning of Elizabeth II's coronation.

What is the deepest known oceanic trench on Earth?

The Mariana Trench reaches nearly 11 km down at its Challenger Deep, where the Pacific Plate is thrust beneath the smaller Mariana Plate.

Which music group holds the record for the most record sales worldwide?

The Beatles are the best-selling music act of all time by estimated sales, yet Decca Records turned them down after a New Year's Day audition in 1962.

In 2004, five million people formed a record 1,050 km human chain running the length of which country?

Bangladesh's chain ran from Teknaf in the far south to Tentulia in the far north on 11 December 2004; opposition parties staged it to demand fresh elections.

Which breed, a hybrid of domestic cats and African servals, produced the tallest domestic cat Guinness has measured?

Savannah cats inherit the serval's tall, lean build and large ears; an early-generation male named Arcturus set the tallest-cat record in 2016 at 48.4 cm (19 in).

Which snake is considered the most venomous land snake based on the toxicity of its venom?

The inland taipan has the most toxic venom of any land snake, yet it is shy, placid and rarely met in its remote homeland; most documented bites were to people handling captive snakes.

Egyptian Ahmed Gabr set Guinness's deepest scuba dive record, 332 metres, in which sea?

The Red Sea off Dahab, Egypt, is where Guinness measured Ahmed Gabr's 2014 dive at 332.35 m; he sank to that depth in 12 to 15 minutes, then needed 14 to 15 hours to climb safely back to the surface.

Which large rodent is known as the biggest in the world?

Capybaras, the world's largest rodents, can weigh over 60 kg; they take to the water to escape predators and can stay submerged for up to five minutes.

How long were the longest fingernails ever recorded on a pair of female hands, combined?

About 43 feet in total: Diana Armstrong's nails measured 1,306.58 cm for Guinness in 2022; she last cut them in 1997, the year her daughter, who used to do her nails, died.

In NBA history, who holds the record for the most points scored in a single game?

Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks in 1962; normally a poor free-throw shooter, he made 28 of 32 that night shooting underhand.

What colour is the 59.6-carat diamond that set an auction record for any gemstone at $71.2 million in 2017?

Pink: the CTF Pink Star sold at Sotheby's in Hong Kong for $71.2 million in 2017; a 2013 sale at $83 million had fallen through when the buyer failed to pay.

In 1989, about two million people joined hands in a 675 km human chain across which region's three countries?

The Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania formed the 'Baltic Way' on the 50th anniversary of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Nazi–Soviet deal that led to their occupation.

Which mountain is the tallest on Earth when measured from base to summit?

Mauna Kea, a dormant Hawaiian volcano, rises about 10,200 metres from its base on the sea floor, though only 4,207 metres of that stand above sea level.

The Guinness Book of Records grew out of a 1951 argument over which was Europe's fastest what?

Game bird: Guinness's managing director missed a shot at a golden plover and fell into an argument over whether it or the red grouse was faster; no reference book could settle it, which gave him the idea.

Which temple complex does Guinness list as the largest religious structure ever built?

Angkor Wat in Cambodia covers 162.6 hectares; King Suryavarman II built it in the 12th century as a Hindu temple to Vishnu, and it was gradually turned into a Buddhist one.

How were the first thousand copies of The Guinness Book of Records distributed?

Given away free to pubs as a promotion for the brewery; they proved so popular that a retail edition was commissioned, and it topped the UK bestseller list by Christmas 1955.

The 8 ft 11 in Robert Wadlow toured America in 1938 for a company that supplied him free with what?

Shoes: the International Shoe Company made his size 37AA pairs at no charge; on tour he wore ordinary street clothes, seeing himself as an advertiser rather than a sideshow exhibit.

Chandra Bahadur Dangi, the shortest adult human ever recorded, came from which country?

Nepal's Chandra Bahadur Dangi stood 54.6 cm (21.5 in); he had never left his remote village until a timber contractor noticed him and Guinness measured him in 2012, when he was 72.

Usain Bolt's 100 m world record of 9.58 seconds was set at the 2009 World Championships in which city?

Berlin's Olympiastadion hosted the 2009 World Championships, where Bolt ran 9.58 on 16 August; the city's mayor later presented him with a section of the Berlin Wall.

Which American holds the record for the most Guinness World Records, having set more than 700 since 1979?

Ashrita Furman, a health-food store manager from Queens, New York, failed at his first record attempt, then did 27,000 jumping jacks in 1979; he has since pogo-sticked up Mount Fuji.

Which species is the largest animal ever known to have lived?

The blue whale, the largest animal known to have lived, feeds almost exclusively on tiny krill, straining them from huge gulps of seawater through its baleen plates.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, is in which country?

Venezuela's Angel Falls drops 979 m from the flat-topped Auyán-tepui; it is named for US pilot Jimmie Angel, whose plane got stuck on the summit in 1937, forcing an 11-day trek down.

Jonathan, a giant tortoise named the oldest living land animal in 2022, has lived since 1882 on which South Atlantic island?

Saint Helena took Jonathan in from the Seychelles in 1882; his age is an estimate resting on the fact that he was already fully grown, and so at least 50, when he landed, which means he may well be older.

Which lake is both the world's deepest and its largest freshwater lake by volume?

Baikal, in Siberia, is 1,642 m deep because it fills a rift valley where the Earth's crust is slowly pulling apart; it holds more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.

In which California basin was Earth's record 134°F air temperature measured at Furnace Creek in 1913?

Death Valley's Furnace Creek logged 134°F (56.7°C) on 10 July 1913, the WMO-recognised world record; some experts doubt that reading and point instead to the 130°F measured there in 2020 and 2021.

The lowest reliably measured natural temperature on Earth, -89.2°C, was recorded at which Antarctic base?

Vostok, set up by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, recorded -89.2°C on 21 July 1983; yet about 4 km beneath the station lies Lake Vostok, a body of liquid water sealed under the ice sheet.

Which country is home to Mawsynram, reportedly the wettest place on Earth?

India's Mawsynram, in the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya, averages nearly 11,900 mm of rain a year, as monsoon winds off the Bay of Bengal are squeezed against the hills and shed their moisture.

Hyperion, the world's tallest known living tree at over 116 m, is what species?

Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens): Hyperion's location is kept secret, but so many visitors trampled the ground around it that in 2022 the park closed the area, on pain of fines or jail.

By volume, the largest known living single-stem tree is a sequoia named after which figure?

General Sherman is said to have been named in 1879 by a naturalist who had served under the general; a socialist colony that held the land in the 1880s renamed it the Karl Marx Tree.

Pando, held to be the world's heaviest single organism, is a clonal colony of which Utah tree?

Quaking aspen stems, an estimated 47,000 of them, make up Pando, sharing one root system across 106 acres of Utah; deer and elk eat so many new shoots that much of it has been fenced off.

Which bird has the greatest wingspan of any living species?

Wandering albatross wings can span well over three metres, the widest of any living bird, and they let it ride the ocean winds for hours at a time without a single flap.

Which animal, weighing only about two grams, is the smallest known mammal by mass?

Etruscan shrew: about 4 cm long without its tail, it burns energy so fast that it must eat up to twice its own body weight every day, and its heart can beat 1,500 times a minute.

The Trans-Siberian Railway, the world's longest rail line, runs from Moscow to which Pacific port?

Vladivostok is where the future Nicholas II, then heir to the throne, took part in the ceremony that began work on the line in 1891; he was tsar by the time it was completed in 1916.

Whose 72-year reign remains the longest of any sovereign monarch in recorded history?

Louis XIV of France reigned 72 years and 110 days, having inherited the throne at four; he outlived his son and eldest grandson, so in 1715 the crown passed to a five-year-old great-grandson.

Which parasitic plant of Sumatra and Borneo produces the largest individual flower on Earth?

Rafflesia arnoldii blooms about a metre across and reeks of rotting meat to lure the flies and beetles that pollinate it; the plant has no leaves, stems or roots of its own.

Which coaster opened in 2005 as the world's fastest, launching to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds?

Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey launched riders to 128 mph and climbed 456 feet; it closed in 2024 and its tower was brought down by implosion in February 2025.

Chris Chataway, who proposed the Guinness book's first editors, paced which runner to the first sub-four-minute mile?

Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4 at Oxford on 6 May 1954 with Chataway and Chris Brasher setting the pace; the man who announced the result, Norris McWhirter, went on to co-found the Guinness book.

Which is the world's largest island, given that Australia is counted as a continent?

Greenland covers more than two million km², about four-fifths of it under ice; the sagas say Erik the Red gave it the inviting name in the hope of attracting settlers.

Who holds the record for the most Academy Awards won by one person, with 22 competitive Oscars?

Walt Disney won 22 competitive Oscars and four honorary ones; for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the Academy handed him one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones.

Which entertainer hosted the BBC's Record Breakers for two decades and broke records on it himself?

Roy Castle fronted the children's show from 1972 for more than 20 years and set records on it himself, among them one in 1973 for the fastest tap dancing: 24 taps a second.

Ross McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness book, was assassinated in 1975 by members of which group?

The Provisional IRA shot Ross McWhirter at his home in Enfield, north London, in November 1975, after he offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of its bombers in England.

Since 2008, Guinness World Records has had the same owner as which other famous entertainment brand?

Ripley's Believe It or Not! and Guinness World Records both belong to the Jim Pattison Group, which began in 1961 when Pattison bought a single GM car dealership in Vancouver.

Which pyramid, the world's largest by volume, lies beneath a grassy hill with a church on its summit?

The Great Pyramid of Cholula, in Mexico, holds an estimated 4.45 million cubic metres, nearly twice the volume of Giza's Great Pyramid, even though the Egyptian monument stands far taller.

Which section of records did Guinness drop over fears that competitors could harm themselves?

Eating and drinking records, including every spirit, wine and beer drinking mark, were retired by the early 1990s; speed beer drinking was readmitted in the 2008 edition.

Why did Guinness drop the "heaviest pet" record?

Owners overfed pets to compete for the title, so Guinness retired the category; it likewise refuses records that involve harming animals.

Which country has the longest total coastline in the world?

Canada's coastline, wrapping around the thousands of islands of its Arctic archipelago, runs to more than 200,000 km, several times the length of Indonesia's or Russia's.

Why does Guinness reject a "fastest violin player" record?

It cannot verify every note is played correctly at extreme speed, so Guinness no longer monitors a 'fastest violin player' title; it also refuses beauty records as not objectively measurable.

Because Earth bulges at the equator, the summit of which Andean volcano is the farthest point from the planet's centre?

Chimborazo, in Ecuador, stands just one degree south of the equator, where the planet's bulge is greatest, so its summit lies farther from Earth's centre than Everest's despite being far lower above sea level.

Which lake is the deepest in Africa, reaching about 1,470 metres?

Lake Tanganyika reaches about 1,470 m because it fills a trough of the East African Rift, where the continent is slowly pulling apart; four countries share its shores.

Which two governing bodies, for cars and for motorcycles, agreed in 1964 to jointly recognise the absolute land speed record?

The FIA and FIM agreed in 1964 to recognise a single absolute record, whichever kind of vehicle set it; it takes two runs in opposite directions within an hour, averaged to cancel out the wind.

Why was Craig Breedlove's Spirit of America not recognised by the FIA in 1963?

Three wheels and no wheel drive are the reasons usually given: the rules for cars called for four wheels driven by the engine, so its 407 mph went into the books as a motorcycle record instead.

Which locomotive won the 1829 Rainhill Trials, opening the railway age that ended the horse's reign as the fastest land transport?

Stephenson's Rocket was the only one of the five entrants to complete the trials, persuading the Liverpool and Manchester Railway to run on locomotives rather than stationary engines.

Who set the women's absolute land speed record in 1976 in the SMI Motivator?

Kitty O'Neil, a deaf stuntwoman, averaged 512.7 mph, reportedly using only 60 percent of the car's power; her contract allowed her to break just the women's record, reserving the overall mark for a male driver.

Which project was launched in 2008 with the aim of pushing the land speed record to 1,000 mph?

Bloodhound LSR, first called Bloodhound SSC, was meant to shatter ThrustSSC's 763 mph; it reached 628 mph in South African desert tests in 2019, but funds ran short and it was put up for sale in 2021.

Who drove ThrustSSC to the land speed record of 763 mph in 1997?

Andy Green, an RAF fighter pilot, drove ThrustSSC to 763.035 mph on 15 October 1997; Richard Noble, who had set the previous record himself in 1983, led the team this time instead of driving.

Which Nevada desert hosted ThrustSSC's supersonic record run in 1997?

Black Rock Desert: the team went back to the playa where its Thrust2 had set the 1983 record after rain washed out a Bonneville attempt, because the smooth dry mud suited solid metal wheels.

Which great ape is the largest living primate?

Gorilla: for all their bulk the apes are mainly plant-eaters, living on leaves, stems and fruit in family groups led by a silverback male.

Where was Spirit of Australia, the boat that set the water speed record in 1978, built?

A Sydney backyard: Ken Warby built the wooden hull in the open at home and powered it with a military-surplus jet engine bought at auction, then averaged 511 km/h on Blowering Dam.

Which inventor's HD-4 hydrofoil set a 1919 water speed record on Bras d'Or Lake?

Alexander Graham Bell's HD-4 reached 114 km/h (70.86 mph) off Baddeck, Nova Scotia; he and Casey Baldwin had been experimenting with hydrofoils there since 1908, alongside their work on early aeroplanes.

Which NASA spacecraft became the fastest human-made object ever, reaching about 690,000 km/h in December 2024?

Parker Solar Probe hits its top speed, about 430,000 mph, at the closest point of each loop around the Sun, where it dives through the star's outer atmosphere; it was launched in 2018.

Which Lockheed spy plane, cruising above Mach 3, has held the official speed record for crewed jets since 1976?

SR-71 Blackbird crews saw missiles fired at them miss, and none was ever shot down; the airframe was built to expand in the heat of Mach 3, so its fuel tanks leaked whenever it was cool.

Which American test pilot broke the sound barrier for the first time, in the rocket-powered X-1 in 1947?

Chuck Yeager was carried aloft by a B-29 bomber, dropped from its bomb bay and lit his rocket engine, passing Mach 1 on 14 October 1947; he had named the plane Glamorous Glennis after his wife.

Which rocket plane did Pete Knight fly to a record 4,520 mph in October 1967?

North American X-15: released from under the wing of a B-52 bomber, it lit its rocket engine and reached Mach 6.7 on 3 October 1967, the fastest flight of the whole programme.

Ruth Chepng'etich set the women's marathon record of 2:09:56 in October 2024 at which race?

Chicago is where she ran 2:09:56 on 13 October 2024 and dedicated the record to Kelvin Kiptum, who had set the men's mark on the same course a year earlier and died that February.

Why are Boston Marathon times ineligible for world records?

Its elevation drop and point-to-point layout break the record rules, which cap net descent and the distance between start and finish, so Geoffrey Mutai's 2:03:02 there in 2011 never counted.

Who became the first sprinter to run 100 m in under 10 seconds with electronic timing, at the 1968 Olympics?

Jim Hines ran 9.95 in the Mexico City final, a record that lasted 15 years until Calvin Smith ran 9.93; he gave up track that year to play for the NFL's Miami Dolphins.

Whose 1988 women's 100 m record of 10.49 seconds is clouded by doubts about the wind reading?

Florence Griffith Joyner ran 10.49 at the 1988 US Olympic Trials in Indianapolis; the wind gauge for her race read 0.0 while one on a jumps runway alongside showed a strong tailwind, so many doubt the mark.

Which pole vaulter raised the world record to 6.30 m outdoors in 2025?

Armand Duplantis cleared 6.30 m on his third and final attempt at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, after two near misses; he had first taken the record in 2020 with 6.17 m.

Which two pole vaulters each set more than 25 world records, often adding a single centimetre?

Sergey Bubka and Yelena Isinbayeva: Bubka broke the men's record 35 times and won six world titles in a row, yet for all that he took only a single Olympic gold.

Which firm, architect of the Sears Tower, designed the Burj Khalifa?

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill set the tower's three wings around a buttressed central core, the bracing that lets so slender a building stand, on a floor plan drawn from a desert flower.

What was the Burj Khalifa called until the night it opened in January 2010?

Burj Dubai was renamed at the opening ceremony to honour Sheikh Khalifa, ruler of neighbouring Abu Dhabi, weeks after his emirate handed Dubai $10 billion to help pay its debts.

John Goodenough became the oldest Nobel laureate in history at 97 for helping to develop which everyday technology?

The lithium-ion battery: in 1980, working at Oxford, he devised the cobalt-oxide cathode at its heart, and he was 97 when he shared the 2019 chemistry prize for it.

Roughly how long is the Great Wall of China's total system of fortifications?

About 21,000 km: a 2012 state survey that counted every dynasty's walls, trenches and natural barriers put the total at 21,196 km, far beyond the 8,850 km measured for the Ming-era wall in 2009.

Which river did researchers declare the world's longest in 2007, after an expedition to its headwaters?

The Amazon: the Brazilian team said a newly traced starting point in southern Peru made it longer than any rival, but a peer-reviewed study two years later still ranked it second.

Which river is the longest in Europe, at about 3,530 km?

The Volga runs about 3,530 km from the Valdai Hills yet never reaches an ocean: it empties into the landlocked Caspian Sea, the longest river anywhere to end in a closed basin.

Which US Navy bathyscaphe made the first descent to the Challenger Deep in 1960?

Trieste, Swiss-designed and bought by the US Navy in 1958, was refitted with a stronger crew sphere forged by Krupp in Germany before Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh rode it down on 23 January 1960.

What did Yuichiro Miura, later Everest's oldest summiteer, use to descend the mountain in 1970?

Skis: he set off from the South Col trailing a parachute as a brake, fell partway down and tumbled before he could stop himself, a run filmed as The Man Who Skied Down Everest; he later summited at 70, 75 and 80.

Who became the first woman to summit Everest, in 1975?

Junko Tabei reached the top in May 1975 days after an avalanche buried her camp and knocked her unconscious; in 1992 she became the first woman to finish the Seven Summits.

Which Nepali guide reached Everest's summit for a record 32nd time in May 2026?

Kami Rita Sherpa owes the tally to his job: since his first summit in 1994 he has worked on commercial expeditions, going back up the mountain with paying climbers for three decades.

Who became the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history, winning the Peace Prize at 17 in 2014?

Malala Yousafzai was shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012 after speaking out for girls' schooling in Pakistan's Swat Valley, survived, and shared the 2014 prize at 17.

What caused Robert Wadlow's extraordinary growth?

An overactive pituitary gland flooded his body with growth hormone; he was never treated, since surgery was judged too dangerous, and he was still growing when he died.

What minor injury led to Robert Wadlow's death in 1940?

A blister: a badly fitted leg brace rubbed his ankle at a Michigan festival in July 1940 and the wound turned septic; he had little feeling in his legs and feet, and died days later aged 22.

Which sport did the oldest person ever recorded take up at the age of 85?

Fencing is the sport she is said to have started at 85; she was still cycling at 100 and did not give up cigarettes until she was 117.

Which painter did the oldest person ever recorded claim to have met as a teenager in Arles?

Vincent van Gogh lived in Arles in 1888 and 1889; a century later she told reporters she had met him in a family shop there, and had nothing kind to say about his looks or his manners.

Sultan Kösen, named by Guinness the tallest living man in 2009, hails from which country?

Turkey's Sultan Kösen, a farmer from Mardin province, was the first man over 8 ft that Guinness had measured in more than a decade; he kept growing as an adult until medical treatment halted it.

Who is the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences?

Marie Curie shared the 1903 physics prize for work on radioactivity and won the 1911 chemistry prize for discovering radium and polonium; in the First World War she organised mobile X-ray teams.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, the longest word in major English dictionaries, names a disease of which organ?

Lungs: the 45-letter word was made up in 1935 by Everett Smith, president of the National Puzzlers' League, purely to be the longest word in English, and dictionaries later took it in.

Roughly how many letters long is the full chemical name of the protein titin?

189,819 letters make up the full chemical name of titin, which takes about three hours to read aloud; chemical naming is open-ended, so dictionaries leave it out and do not count it as a word.

Which film is the highest-grossing of all time when adjusted for inflation?

Gone with the Wind (1939) tops Guinness's inflation-adjusted list at more than $3 billion, a total built up over decades of cinema re-releases as well as its first run.

Which superhero film sat second on the all-time nominal box-office chart at the end of 2024, behind only Avatar?

Avengers: Endgame took the outright record in 2019 and later lost it to Avatar; by October 2026 it was back in first place.

Which author's series of novels has sold more than 600 million copies worldwide?

J. K. Rowling thought up Harry Potter on a delayed train in 1990 and saw the first book published in 1997; the seven novels have since sold over 600 million copies in 85 languages.

Which bird of prey is ranked the fastest animal on Earth, credited with hunting dives of over 300 km/h?

Peregrine falcon: it hunts other birds from above, folding into a steep dive called a stoop that is credited with topping 200 mph, and strikes its prey in mid-air.

Which fish, long called the ocean's fastest at over 100 km/h, did later studies clock far slower?

Sailfish were credited with 35 m/s, about 125 km/h, until tests of how fast their swimming muscle can twitch showed they cannot exceed 10 to 15 m/s, at most about 54 km/h.

Which bird, sprinting at up to about 70 km/h, is the fastest animal on two legs?

Ostrich: it is the only bird with just two toes on each foot, a pared-down design that helps it run, and a single stride can cover three to five metres.

Which species is the largest living lizard?

Komodo dragon: it lives only on a handful of Indonesian islands, where males reach about three metres and a stomach that stretches lets an adult eat up to 80 percent of its body weight in one meal.

How does the number of bones in a giraffe's neck compare with the number in a human's?

Exactly as many: giraffes have seven neck vertebrae, just as people do, but each one is stretched to 25 cm or more.

In which country was Lolong, the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, captured in 2011?

The Philippines: the 6.17 m saltwater crocodile was captured alive in Bunawan township in September 2011 after it was suspected of killing two people.

Which species is the largest living fish?

Whale shark: for all its bulk it is a docile filter-feeder that swims open-mouthed to strain plankton and small fish from the water, and it lets divers swim alongside.

Which bird makes the longest known migration?

Arctic tern: a 2010 tracking study found the birds zigzag between their northern nesting grounds and Antarctica, about 71,000 km a year; over a 30-year life that is three trips to the Moon and back.

Which American won the longest match in tennis history, taking the fifth set 70–68 at Wimbledon in 2010?

John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut after 11 hours 5 minutes spread over three days; Wimbledon brought in a final-set tie-break in 2019, after another Isner marathon in the 2018 semi-finals.

Which NASA spacecraft, launched in 1977, is the most distant human-made object from Earth?

Voyager 1 actually left 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2, yet pulled ahead, passed Pioneer 10 in 1998 and crossed into interstellar space in August 2012.

Whose streak of consecutive Major League games passed Lou Gehrig's 56-year-old record in 1995 and ran to 2,632?

Cal Ripken Jr. passed Lou Gehrig's 2,130 games on 6 September 1995 and kept going for three more years, until he took himself out of the Baltimore line-up in September 1998.

In which Pennsylvania town was the NBA's only 100-point game played on March 2, 1962?

Hershey: the Philadelphia Warriors took a few home games that season to the chocolate town's arena, and it was there that they beat the New York Knicks 169–147.

Why does no video footage of the NBA's only 100-point game exist?

It was not televised, and no film of it has ever turned up; the only recording is radio audio of the fourth quarter, so the 169–147 game survives through box scores and photographs.

What maximum depth did the Kola Superdeep Borehole reach in 1989?

About 12 km — 12,262 m — was reached in 1989 after drilling began in 1970; the hole was abandoned when temperatures near 180°C made going deeper impractical.

Which planet is home to Olympus Mons, the largest volcano known on any world?

Mars: its crust does not drift across the planet's hot spots as Earth's plates do, so lava kept piling up in one place and built a volcano about 600 km wide.

Who became the first person to break the sound barrier in freefall, jumping from 39 km up in 2012?

Felix Baumgartner fell faster than Mach 1.2 after stepping from a balloon capsule above New Mexico; his radio link was Joe Kittinger, whose 1960 freefall records he was breaking.

Alan Eustace, who made the record highest freefall jump in 2014, was an executive at which company?

Google's Alan Eustace, a senior vice-president, rode a balloon to about 41 km in a pressure suit with no capsule and cut himself loose, beating the mark set from a capsule two years earlier.

After building his first cube in 1974, about how long did Ernő Rubik take to solve it?

A month, give or take: once he had scrambled the prototype, Rubik needed weeks of trial and error, building and testing theories, before he found a way to put it back in order.

Which body governs speedcubing competitions and keeps the official records?

The World Cube Association, founded in 2004, ranks solvers on an average of five attempts with the best and the worst struck out, so one lucky scramble cannot settle a title.

Which service has Guinness World Records built into a major business since its 2008 sale?

Creating records as publicity for paying clients took off after the 2008 sale: with the book trade in turmoil, Guinness began sending its judges to certify record attempts staged by brands.

Which Agatha Christie whodunit, on the London stage since 1952, is the world's longest-running play?

The Mousetrap made one small boy rich: Christie gave its rights to her grandson Mathew as a ninth-birthday present, a gift that turned out to be the family's big money winner.

Which Alpine country opened the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world's longest railway tunnel, in 2016?

Switzerland's voters backed the 57 km tunnel in a 1992 referendum, and it took 17 years of digging beneath the Alps before the first trains ran through in 2016.

Whose painting Salvator Mundi became the most expensive artwork ever auctioned, selling for about $450 million in 2017?

Leonardo da Vinci's panel made $450.3 million at Christie's in New York, far above any earlier auction price, though it had resurfaced only in 2005, bought from an American estate.

China's Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, named the world's longest by Guinness in 2011, carries what?

High-speed trains on the Beijing–Shanghai line cross the 164 km viaduct; track raised on piers takes less land and less time than an embankment, and the line also crosses the 114 km Langfang–Qingxian viaduct, Guinness's second longest.

Which country staged the largest gymnastics display on record, with 100,090 performers at its 2007 Arirang mass games?

North Korea filled Pyongyang's May Day Stadium for the show, whose backdrop was a human mosaic: more than 30,000 children flipping coloured cards so quickly that the pictures seemed to move.

For how much was Salvator Mundi sold at a 1958 auction, when it was taken for a copy?

£45 was all it fetched, heavily overpainted and credited to Giovanni Boltraffio; it then vanished for nearly 50 years before turning up at a small American sale in 2005.