Word: fastest
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...some brave, some gluttonous, some merely odd. On November 13, 116 exhibitionists stripped down to their skivvies in London's St. Pancras Station. Some 175 miles away, at a juvenile detention center in Wigan, prisoners and staff took turns running on a treadmill in a bid at setting the fastest time for a collective 100-mile run. In Tokyo, a man dashed 100 meters - on all fours - in under 19 seconds. What did these oddball events have in common? Each was an attempt, on Guinness World Records Day, to enter the tome, which for more than a half century...
...validate one's pride. In 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, went on a hunting trip with friends in Ireland. Though he considered himself an excellent shot, Beaver was unable to bag any golden plovers. Wounded, Beaver suggested the bird might be the fastest in Europe. Upon returning from the trip, neither he nor his friends were able to locate a reference book that provided the answer...
...having a hard time grasping the importance of becoming the world's fastest kiwi peeler(multiple-record holder Alastair Galpin set that mark this week, stripping and eating the fruit in about 16 seconds) you're not alone. "There can be a snobbishness about record breaking," the book's editor-in-chief, Craig Glenday, told Britain's Sky News. "What may seem pointless to you could be a passion for someone else." For some, record-breaking itself has become a consuming passion. Ashrita Furman, a health-food store manager from Queens, N.Y., has broken more than 200 records. He notched...
Much of the growth was financed by cheap money, as Swedish and Finnish banks competed for customers in Europe's fastest growing region. Entrepreneur Lepik recalls firing off an e-mail loan application in 2006 with a "very basic" business plan, and getting approval in less than a week. Private debt across the Baltics rose from nearly zero to Western levels as consumers became hooked on credit. Home buyers and businesses took out mortgages in foreign currencies, which had the effect of worsening already severe current-account deficits. In a peculiarly Estonian twist, companies in the tech-savvy country began...
Obama's far from the fastest off the mark, however; in 1976, Jimmy Carter created a transition staff shortly after winning the Pennsylvania primary - well before the Democratic National Convention in July. Under Jack Watson, who had worked on Carter's successful Georgia gubernatorial campaign, the transition team worked throughout the general election, preparing for what would happen in the event of victory. Carter had made it clear early on that he did not want to mirror the setup and size of Richard Nixon's White House staff; specifically, Carter refused to even name anyone chief of staff, instead changing...