Tag Archives: United Kingdom

Best British Documentary Series of the 20th Century

In 2000 the British Film Institute published its TV100 list of the most influential and memorable British TV programmes of the 20th Century. The list was generated by votes from a wide variety of TV insiders and the top documentary in the countdown was The World at War ITV’s epic 26-part history of the 2nd World War, narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier.

Best selling copyright book

Excluding non-copyright works such as the Bible (with an estimated 6 billion copies sold) and the Koran, the worlds all-time best-selling book is Guinness World Records (formerly The Guinness Book of Records). Since it was first published in October 1955, global sales in some 37 languages have exceeded 100 million as of October 2003. Comparatively, Harry Potter books have sold over 100 million copies and Mao Tse-Tung’s Little Red Book boasts sales of around 900 million.

Busiest shipping lane

The Dover Strait is the world’s busiest shipping lane. 500-600 ships a day pass through the narrow strait between the UK and France. Cargoes include oil from the Middle-East to European ports, and various commodities from North and South America to European customers. In 1999, 1.4 billion tonnes gross, carried by 62,500 vessels passed through the Dover Strait. The Malacca Straits, off the Malaysian peninsula, is believed to handle more traffic (vessels), but less tonnage. Figures from other areas of the globe (i.e. Malacca, Gibraltar, Continue reading →

Climbing the height of Everest on a machine (female team)

The fastest time to climb the height of Everest (8,848m 29,028ft) on a ‘versaclimber’ exercise machine is 2 hr 45 min 53 sec by a team of eight females – Bridget Funnell, Victoria Brown, Natasha Jones, Sarah Ruscombe-King, Sandra Heard, Margaret Reeve, Sandra Cann and Nicola Hammond (all UK) – at the Fusion Gym, Bude, Cornwall, UK, on 24 September 2006.

Deepest salvage of cargo from a shipwreck

The deepest cargo salvage from a shipwreck was carried out by Blue Water Recoveries Ltd (UK), when they salvaged 179 tonnes of blister copper and tin ingots off the wreck of the merchant vessel SS Alpherat from a depth of 3,770 m (12,370 ft). The salvage took place during February 1997 in the central Mediterranean just east of Malta where Alpherat had been sunk by a bomb dropped from a German Junkers 88 aircraft while transiting in convoy during World War II. Blue Water Recoveries Continue reading →

Deepest Santa ho ho ho

The deepest ho-ho-ho measured 62.81 Hz and was performed by James Gower (UK) on the set of Guinness World Records – Smashed, in London, UK, on 23 April 2009. The depth of the ho ho ho was measured with a laryngograph. The laryngograph is a device for the noninvasive measurement of the time variation of the degree of contact between the vibrating vocal folds during voice production. The lower the Hz figure the lowest (deepest) the pitch.

Deepest watch diving limit

The deepest diving watch can function at 6,000 m (20,000 ft). Montres Charmex SA of Switzerland achieved this with their mechanical divers CX Swiss Military Watch™ 20,000 feet model, on 5 January 2009. Development started in 2006. It is the first mechanical divers watch water resistant to 20,000 ft (6,000 m).