Top 10 Unbroken Guinness Records

When people think of the place that could be the largest office building in the world, they might imagine a skyscraper reaching the sky, but in reality, it's only five stories tall. Of course, height is not the issue; what matters is the office space and workforce capacity. The building that set the record in 1955 and continues to hold this record is the Pentagon in Washington, DC, with a total floor area of over 6.6 million square feet.

Among that, The Pentagon has more than 3.7 million square feet of office space spread across five floors above ground with two basement levels. The space inside The Pentagon is three times more than in the Empire State Building in New York City, and its corridors stretch for 27.5 miles. However, due to the five concentric rings integrated into its design, no two points in the building take more than seven minutes to walk between. In terms of personnel, there was a time when over 31,000 people worked at The Pentagon.

In 2020, the wealthiest man in the world was Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, amassing a personal fortune of $146.9 billion. While that amount could buy everything Amazon sells thousands of times over, it's not the largest personal fortune an individual has ever had in world history (adjusted for inflation). The one surpassing Bezos in terms of personal wealth is none other than John D. Rockefeller, who controlled 90% of the U.S. oil production. In 1913, his personal fortune was listed at $900 million.

Of course, that enormous sum of John D. Rockefeller's wealth is in 1913 dollars, but when adjusted for inflation and considering the wealth accumulation leading up to his death in 1937, Rockefeller's value skyrocketed to $418 billion. No one else in world history can compare to that wealth, though it's challenging to compare him to figures like the Pharaoh of Egypt or Augustus Caesar, so he still holds the record as the richest person in modern history. Forbes declared Rockefeller the richest person in history in 2006 when his adjusted wealth reached $305.3 billion, and this figure has only increased since then.

There have been many considered giants, but only one man holds the record for being the tallest in history. The tallest man ever recorded, medically verified, is Robert Wadlow. Born to average-sized parents and weighing nearly 4kg at birth, Wadlow was destined to stand head and shoulders above the rest of humanity with a height of 2.72 meters. Sadly, he lived only until the age of 22, although there were no signs to suggest he wouldn't have continued to grow had he lived longer.

The tallest woman ever recorded is Zeng Jinlian in the village of Yujiang, Hubei Province, China. She stood at 2.4 meters tall when she passed away in 1982 at the age of 17. She began abnormal growth at only 4 months old, managing to reach a towering 1.5 meters by her fourth birthday. By the age of thirteen, she was 2.1 meters tall. Her height record was recorded by Guinness World Records as the tallest woman ever recorded. However, other shorter women have been recorded as the tallest living women at the time of their documentation.

If you've ever opened a copy of the Guinness World Records, you likely came across a photo of Shridhar Chillal in Pune, India, and been horrified by what you saw. That's because Shridhar Chillal holds the record for the person with the longest fingernails in the world, a record he achieved by not cutting his nails for 66 years. Of course, having nails that long renders your hands practically unusable for anything, so he only grew the nails on his left hand while keeping his right hand neatly trimmed.

Finally, when Shridhar Chillal's nails were cut, they measured an alarming 909.6cm. He began growing them—or rather, stopped cutting them—at the age of 14. A teacher punished him for breaking a nail, and from then on, he stopped cutting them. Growing nails this long isn't easy, and the result was enduring a lot of pain and sleepless nights. Eventually, he cut them off to be displayed in Ripley's Believe It or Not! on Times Square.

In 2019, Avengers: Endgame set a new record as the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing James Cameron's Avatar.

Endgame earned an impressive $2,797,800,564 at the global box office. While this record may someday be broken, the film holds the inflation-adjusted highest-grossing record since 1939 when adjusted for inflation, dethroning Gone with the Wind. Gone with the Wind, released in 1939, gained immense popularity and won ten Academy Awards out of thirteen nominations at the 12th Academy Awards.

Endgame grossed $390 million worldwide, a substantial amount in today's economy. However, when adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind earned an equivalent of $7.2 billion in 2020. Additionally, comparing ticket sales with Avatar, which sold 78.3 million tickets, Gone with the Wind sold an astounding 225.7 million tickets upon its release—an unprecedented figure that modern films find challenging to surpass.

When it comes to weight, one man surpasses all others in recorded history. Jon Brower Minnoch holds the record as the heaviest person ever recorded, reaching a staggering weight of 1,400 lbs. (635kg) at his peak. Minnoch was never a slim individual, weighing 294 lbs. (133kg) at the age of 12. By the time he was 22, he stood at 1.85 meters tall and weighed 230kg.

Minnoch's weight became a significant factor contributing to his declining health, attributed to his body's excessive fluid retention. He had to be hospitalized for 16 months during which he lost 924 lbs. (419 kg), almost setting another record for the second most weight lost ever recorded. Unfortunately, a year later, he weighed nearly a thousand pounds, and less than two years later, he passed away. At the time of his death, he weighed 798 lbs. (262kg).

The likelihood of being struck by lightning at some point in one's life is 1 in 15,300. While being struck by lightning is relatively rare, if you're struck more than once in a lifetime, it usually happens in quick succession after the first strike. The person struck by lightning the most is Roy C. Sullivan - he was struck seven times, and he survived!

Unfortunate luck with repeated lightning strikes earned him the nickname The Human Lightning Rod, and while a lightning strike typically proves fatal, Sullivan survived being struck seven times, starting in 1942 and ending in 1977 with his final lightning encounter. He showed no fear in the face of strikes and listed a catalog of injuries, including losing a toenail, both eyebrows, a burn on his left shoulder, his hair being set on fire… twice, and his leg, ankle, chest, and stomach being burned. After surviving seven lightning strikes, he died by suicide in 1983, believed to be due to a broken heart.

When the United States dropped the first atomic bombs in history on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, approximately 90,000 to 146,000 Japanese citizens were killed, either immediately or in the aftermath due to burns and radiation exposure. Two days after Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, another bomb named 'Fat Boy' was dropped on Nagasaki, resulting in the death of about 39,000 to 80,000 people. Over half of the deaths occurred on the first day of each bombing, and very few people survived to tell the tale. One man witnessed both bombings, and his record hopes never to be broken.

When the first bomb was dropped, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on a business trip in Hiroshima, miraculously surviving. After the city was destroyed, he returned to his hometown, Nagasaki. Arriving just in time, he witnessed the explosion and survived the second bomb, making him the twice fortunate survivor of 2 atomic bombs. Based on what he experienced and witnessed, it's undoubtedly a haunting memorial. Tsutomu Yamaguchi not only survived the war but also lived through the century, reaching the age of 93, passing away from stomach cancer in 2010.

Securing a gold medal in any sport is incredibly challenging, as you compete against the best athletes from around the world, and you can only strive once every four years. Winning a single medal is a remarkable achievement, automatically categorizing someone as the top in their specific sport. For Michael Phelps, that's undoubtedly the case, as he currently holds the record for winning the most Olympic gold medals ever in history.

Phelps amassed a remarkable total of 28 Olympic medals throughout his sporting career. Among them, 23 gold, 3 silver, and 2 bronze medals. Alongside these impressive accomplishments, Phelps also set numerous Guinness World Records, holding records for the Fastest 100m Butterfly, Most silver medals awarded in a single Olympic swimming race, and more. Because he secured numerous medals over 5 Olympic appearances throughout his career, he is sure to hold this record indefinitely.

For most, breaking a record once suffices to boost their ego and give them something to brag about with friends. That suits the majority, but not Ashrita Furman; he's not interested in breaking just one record—he's all about breaking as many records as possible, which is why he holds the record for the person with the most records broken in history! He's a record-breaker, having shattered over 600 records in more than 30 years.

Not all of Ashrita Furman's records stand, with about 200 of them still existing, but that doesn't diminish his remarkable achievements. It also demonstrates that there are plenty of bizarre records verified by Guinness over the years. His first record involved performing 27,000 jumping jacks in 6 hours and 45 minutes, and since then, he's been captivated by record-breaking. He broke records for balancing a chainsaw on his chin, lighting and extinguishing the most blowtorches in one minute, snapping the most arrows with the neck in one minute, and hundreds more. Because he's accumulated so many, it's challenging for anyone to dedicate the same amount of time and effort to break the records he once set.