Every record broken since 1955

20265 records

First sub-two-hour marathon in a race — 1:59:30Athletics

Sabastian Sawe (Kenya) — Ran it at the London Marathon on 26 April 2026 — the first person to break two hours in open competition, not a staged attempt.

Longest fingernails on a pair of hands (male) — 594.45 cmBody

Lưu Công Huyền (Vietnam) — Leads the Guinness World Records 2026 edition. He is a painter, and still paints.

Over 2,000 new records in a single editionOdd

Guinness World Records 2026 — The current book alone carries more than 2,000 records, most of them set or broken in the previous eighteen months.

Most consecutive years the marathon record has fallenSport

Modern marathoning — The men's record has been broken nine times since 2003, taking almost five minutes off the world best.

Records set every yearOdd

Guinness World Records — The organisation still receives around 50,000 applications a year and approves roughly 1,000 of them — about three new records every day.

20259 records

Longest voluntary breath hold underwater — 29 min 3 secEndurance

Vitomir Maričić (Croatia) — Beat a record most freedivers assumed was close to the ceiling of human physiology.

World pole vault record — 6.30 mAthletics

Armand Duplantis (Sweden) — He has now broken the world record more than a dozen times, always by a single centimetre, always with the bonus that comes with it.

Most burning parachute jumps by one person — 16Screen

Tom Cruise (USA) — Performed them himself for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, at 62.

Largest serving of jollof rice — 8,780 kgFood

Hilda Baci (Nigeria) — Cooked in Lagos, and eaten by tens of thousands of people afterwards.

Fastest mental addition of 100 four-digit numbers — 30.9 secOdd

Aaryan Shukla (India) — Fourteen years old, and faster than most people can read the numbers out.

First all-female spaceflight crew since 1963Space

Blue Origin NS-31 — Six women flew together on a suborbital hop, 62 years after Tereshkova flew alone.

Tallest and shortest dogs meetOdd

Reggie & Pearl (USA) — A Great Dane and a Chihuahua, 1 m and 9.14 cm at the shoulder respectively, introduced for the first time.

Most Grand Slam titles in the Open Era race continuesSport

Novak Djokovic (Serbia) — At 38 he remains the record holder with 24 major singles titles.

Most-used AI application ever launchedTech

ChatGPT and successors — Weekly users passed 800 million, the fastest adoption of any software product in history.

202410 records

First commercial spacewalkSpace

Polaris Dawn (SpaceX) — Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis opened the hatch in September 2024. Every previous spacewalk had been by a government astronaut.

First catch of a returning rocket boosterSpace

SpaceX Starship (USA) — The launch tower's arms caught a 70 m booster out of the air on its way down.

Closest approach to the Sun — 6.1 million kmSpace

Parker Solar Probe (NASA) — Also the fastest anything human-made has ever travelled, at roughly 692,000 km/h.

World pole vault record — 6.26 mAthletics

Armand Duplantis (Sweden) — Broke it twice more, including in the Paris Olympic final after winning gold.

World 100 m freestyle record — 46.40Swimming

Pan Zhanle (China) — Took the record by nearly half a second in the Paris relay leg, a margin almost unheard of in sprint swimming.

World women's marathon record — 2:09:56Athletics

Ruth Chepngetich (Kenya) — First woman under 2:10, in Chicago.

Most subscribed YouTube channelScreen

MrBeast (USA) — Passed 300 million subscribers, overtaking a corporate music label to do it.

Most Olympic gold medals by a gymnast of the modern eraSport

Simone Biles (USA) — Returned in Paris to take her tally to seven Olympic golds and 30 world championship medals — the most of any gymnast.

Most Olympic medals won by a country at a single Games of the modern eraSport

United States — Paris 2024 produced record medal counts and the first Games with exactly equal numbers of male and female athletes.

Fastest supercomputer ever builtTech

El Capitan / Frontier (USA) — Exascale computing arrived — over a quintillion calculations per second, a thousand times faster than 2008's fastest machine.

202311 records

World marathon record — 2:00:35Athletics

Kelvin Kiptum (Kenya) — Ran it in Chicago aged 23. He was killed in a car crash four months later; the record stood until 2026.

World women's marathon record — 2:11:53Athletics

Tigst Assefa (Ethiopia) — Took over two minutes off the record in Berlin, the biggest drop in the event's history.

World shot put record — 23.56 mAthletics

Ryan Crouser (USA) — Broke his own record with a technique he invented himself and named after his home town.

World women's 1500 m, mile and 5000 m recordsAthletics

Faith Kipyegon (Kenya) — Broke three world records in 49 days.

First landing near the Moon's south poleSpace

Chandrayaan-3 (India) — Made India the fourth country to land on the Moon and the first at the southern polar region.

Most NBA career pointsSport

LeBron James (USA) — Passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 38,387, a record that had stood 34 years.

Most Grand Slam men's singles titles — 24Sport

Novak Djokovic (Serbia) — Settled the three-way race that had run for 15 years.

Most Grammy Awards ever — 32Music

Beyoncé (USA) — Passed the previous record of 31, held by a classical conductor since 1997.

Longest cooking marathonFood

Hilda Baci (Nigeria) — Cooked for 93 hours 11 minutes in Lagos, watched by crowds outside.

Most international goals in footballSport

Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) — Passed 120 international goals, extending a record he had already broken in 2021.

Most-watched Netflix series of its eraScreen

Wednesday / Squid Game — Streaming viewing records were broken three times in eighteen months as the platforms competed on scale.

20229 records

First deliberate deflection of an asteroidSpace

DART (NASA) — Flew into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos at 22,000 km/h and measurably shortened its orbit — the first proof we can move a rock that's coming at us.

World marathon record — 2:01:09Athletics

Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya) — Berlin again, and his fourth world-best performance over the distance.

World pole vault record — 6.21 mAthletics

Armand Duplantis (Sweden) — One of a run of records he has broken more than ten times.

World 100 m freestyle record — 46.86Swimming

David Popovici (Romania) — Aged 17, and the first textile-suit swimmer to break the supersuit-era mark.

Longest suspension bridge — 2,023 mEngineering

1915 Çanakkale Bridge (Turkey) — Its main span length was chosen to match the year of the Turkish republic's centenary.

Most goals in men's international footballSport

Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) — Passed 118 international goals, a record that had stood since 1972.

Fastest-growing consumer application everTech

ChatGPT — Reached 100 million users in two months, faster than any app before it.

Most-watched World Cup final everSport

Argentina vs France — An estimated 1.5 billion people watched Messi's Argentina win on penalties.

Oldest living land animalNature

Jonathan the tortoise (St Helena) — Hatched around 1832, which makes him older than the postage stamp and the telephone.

20219 records

First powered flight on another planetSpace

Ingenuity (NASA) — Lifted three metres off the Martian surface on 19 April 2021 and hovered 39 seconds. Built for five flights, it managed 72.

First all-civilian orbital spaceflightSpace

Inspiration4 (SpaceX) — Four people with no professional astronaut among them spent three days in orbit.

Oldest person in space — 90Space

William Shatner (Canada) — Flew on Blue Origin's New Shepard, 55 years after first pretending to.

Most hot dogs eaten in ten minutes — 76Food

Joey Chestnut (USA) — His 14th Nathan's title, and more than double Kobayashi's record-breaking total from 2001.

Longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female)Body

Ayanna Williams (USA) — Grew them nearly 30 years to 7.33 m, then had them cut off on camera with a rotary tool.

Most-watched Netflix series launchScreen

Squid Game (South Korea) — 111 million households in its first month, a record it held until Wednesday.

World women's 100 m hurdles and 400 m hurdles recordsAthletics

Various — Tokyo produced record-breaking runs in both hurdles events, some of the oldest marks on the books finally falling.

Most Test wickets by a fast bowler of its eraSport

James Anderson (England) — Passed 600 Test wickets at 38, the first seamer ever to do it.

First company valued at three trillion dollarsTech

Apple (USA) — Reached the mark in early 2022, four years after becoming the first to a trillion.

20207 records

First crewed orbital launch by a private companySpace

SpaceX Crew Dragon (USA) — Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley reached the ISS in May 2020 — the first time a company, not a nation, put people in orbit.

World pole vault record — 6.18 mAthletics

Armand Duplantis (Sweden) — Broke Bubka's 26-year-old record twice in a week, aged 20.

World 5000 m and 10,000 m recordsAthletics

Joshua Cheptegei (Uganda) — Broke both of Bekele's 15-year-old records within two months.

Longest plank — 8 hr 15 minOdd

George Hood (USA) — Aged 62, and he did 75 push-ups afterwards to make a point.

Most-viewed video onlineScreen

'Baby Shark Dance' — Passed 10 billion views, the first video ever to do so.

Second asteroid sample returnSpace

Hayabusa2 (Japan) — Delivered 5.4 g from Ryugu, more than a hundred times what the first mission managed.

Most Formula One world championships (shared)Sport

Lewis Hamilton (UK) — Equalled Michael Schumacher's seven titles, 16 years after Schumacher set the mark.

201910 records

First marathon distance under two hours — 1:59:40Athletics

Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya) — Ran it in Vienna in October 2019. Rotating pacemakers meant it could never be ratified, but the barrier was gone.

World women's marathon record — 2:14:04Athletics

Brigid Kosgei (Kenya) — Broke Paula Radcliffe's 16-year-old record in Chicago, the day after Kipchoge's Vienna run.

First landing on the far side of the MoonSpace

Chang'e 4 (China) — Needed a relay satellite because the far side can never see Earth directly.

First image of a black holeTech

Event Horizon Telescope — Eight radio telescopes across four continents combined into one Earth-sized instrument to photograph M87*.

Deepest ocean dive — 10,928 mExploration

Victor Vescovo (USA) — Went 16 m deeper than Piccard and Walsh, and found a plastic bag on the bottom.

All fourteen 8,000 m peaks in six monthsMountains

Nirmal Purja (Nepal) — Beat the previous record of just under eight years.

Highest-grossing filmScreen

Avengers: Endgame — Took $2.79 billion and briefly ended Avatar's ten-year reign.

Most Grand Slam men's titles race tightensSport

Djokovic, Federer, Nadal — All three passed 16 majors, the closest three-way record chase in the sport's history.

Most runs in a Cricket World Cup final of its eraSport

England vs New Zealand — The only World Cup final decided on boundary countback after both the match and the super over were tied.

Oldest verified living man of its eraBody

Various — The oldest-person titles changed hands repeatedly through 2019 as the first 1900s-born cohort thinned.

20187 records

World marathon record — 2:01:39Athletics

Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya) — Took 78 seconds off the record in Berlin, the biggest single improvement in over 50 years.

Fastest human-made object ever builtSpace

Parker Solar Probe (USA) — Launched August 2018 to fly through the Sun's outer atmosphere. It keeps breaking its own record and has passed 690,000 km/h.

World decathlon record — 9,126 pointsAthletics

Kevin Mayer (France) — Set over two days in Talence and still standing.

Most Formula One pole positionsSport

Lewis Hamilton (UK) — Passed Michael Schumacher's 68 and kept going to over 100.

First trillion-dollar companyTech

Apple (USA) — No company in history had been worth that much until August 2018.

Longest plank of its eraOdd

Mao Weidong / George Hood — The plank record passed eight hours as competitors traded it back and forth.

Most Formula One race wins by a British driverSport

Lewis Hamilton (UK) — On his way to a record 103 wins and a shared record seven world titles.

20177 records

First rope-free climb of El CapitanMountains

Alex Honnold (USA) — Free soloed the 900 m Freerider route in 3 hr 56 min with no rope, no harness and no second chance.

Fastest production car — 447 km/hSpeed

Koenigsegg Agera RS (Sweden) — 278 mph average over two runs on a closed Nevada highway.

Fastest assisted marathon attempt — 2:00:25Athletics

Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya) — Nike's Breaking2 project on the Monza circuit fell 25 seconds short, and proved the barrier was reachable.

Longest mission at Saturn endsSpace

Cassini (USA/ESA) — Flew 22 times through the gap between Saturn and its rings before deliberately burning up in the atmosphere.

Most Grand Slam singles titles by a woman in the Open EraSport

Serena Williams (USA) — Won her 23rd major at the Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant.

Oldest living person verifiedBody

Various — The supercentenarian title changed hands three times in 2017 alone.

Most expensive footballer ever signedSport

Neymar (Brazil) — €222 million to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, more than double the previous record.

20169 records

First round-the-world flight by a solar-powered aircraftAviation

Bertrand Piccard & André Borschberg — Flew Solar Impulse 2 roughly 42,000 km on zero fuel. One Pacific leg lasted five days non-stop.

World 400 m record — 43.03Athletics

Wayde van Niekerk (South Africa) — Ran from lane eight in the Rio final, unable to see a single rival, and broke a 17-year-old record.

Most Olympic medals ever — 28Sport

Michael Phelps (USA) — Finished in Rio with 23 golds, more than most countries have won in their history.

World 800 m and 1500 m freestyle recordsSwimming

Katie Ledecky (USA) — Won the Rio 800 m by 11 seconds and broke her own world record doing it.

Fastest Rubik's Cube solve — 4.73Odd

Feliks Zemdegs (Australia) — Took the record back three years after losing it.

Longest odds title win in footballSport

Leicester City (UK) — Won the Premier League at 5,000–1, the longest odds ever paid out on a team sport.

Longest single US spaceflightSpace

Scott Kelly (USA) — 340 consecutive days aboard the ISS, studied against his identical twin on the ground.

First program to beat a top professional at GoTech

AlphaGo / DeepMind — Beat Lee Sedol 4–1. Go had roughly 10^170 legal positions and was thought a decade away.

End of the longest championship drought in major sportSport

Chicago Cubs (USA) — Won the World Series after 108 years, in extra innings, after a rain delay.

20157 records

Most distant world explored close upSpace

New Horizons (USA) — Flew past Pluto in July 2015 after nine years and five billion km, turning a blurry dot into a world with ice mountains.

First landing of an orbital-class rocket boosterSpace

SpaceX (USA) — Falcon 9's first stage flew back and landed upright in December 2015, and reusable rockets stopped being theoretical.

World women's 1500 m record — 3:50.07Athletics

Genzebe Dibaba (Ethiopia) — Held for eight years.

Most consecutive wins in a football league seasonSport

Various — 2015 saw record unbeaten runs set across Europe's major leagues.

Longest rail tunnel — 57 kmEngineering

Gotthard Base Tunnel (Switzerland) — Broke through in 2015, opened in 2016, and runs 2.3 km beneath the Alps at its deepest.

Fastest film to $1 billionScreen

Star Wars: The Force Awakens — Twelve days, and the biggest opening weekend ever recorded at the time.

First Triple Crown in 37 yearsSport

American Pharoah (USA) — Ended the longest drought in the history of American horse racing.

20147 records

First soft landing on a cometSpace

Philae lander (ESA) — Touched down on Comet 67P in November 2014 after Rosetta spent ten years chasing a four-kilometre lump of ice.

World marathon record — 2:02:57Athletics

Dennis Kimetto (Kenya) — First man under 2:03.

Most goals in a single World Cup finals careerSport

Miroslav Klose (Germany) — Scored his 16th, passing Ronaldo, in the 7–1 semi-final.

Most viral charity campaignOdd

Ice Bucket Challenge — Raised over $200 million for ALS research in eight weeks, the fastest-spreading charity campaign ever recorded.

Fastest train — 603 km/hEngineering

L0 Series maglev (Japan) — Set on a test track in 2015 after breaking its own record repeatedly.

Oldest person to complete a marathonBody

Fauja Singh (UK/India) — Ran his last competitive race at 101, having taken up running in his eighties.

Biggest World Cup semi-final marginSport

Germany 7–1 Brazil — The heaviest defeat a host nation has ever suffered, and Brazil's worst loss in 94 years.

20137 records

First swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cageEndurance

Diana Nyad (USA) — Aged 64, swam 177 km in just under 53 hours on her fifth attempt, 35 years after her first.

World marathon record — 2:03:23Athletics

Wilson Kipsang (Kenya) — Berlin again — the course has produced almost every marathon record of the modern era.

First spacecraft to enter interstellar spaceSpace

Voyager 1 (USA) — NASA confirmed it had crossed the heliopause, 36 years after launch.

Fastest Rubik's Cube solve — 5.55Odd

Mats Valk (Netherlands) — Ended Zemdegs's two-year hold on the record.

Most Test wickets in a career — 800Sport

Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka) — Retired figure confirmed as the benchmark no bowler has approached.

Most-watched television series finale of its eraScreen

Breaking Bad — Streaming changed how audience records were counted, and the numbers have climbed ever since.

Most consecutive Grand Slam match wins of its eraSport

Various — 2013 saw record streaks across tennis, football and Formula One as sports science tightened its grip.

201210 records

First person to break the sound barrier in freefallEndurance

Felix Baumgartner (Austria) — Jumped from 38,969 m and hit 1,357 km/h — faster than sound, wearing nothing but a pressure suit.

World 800 m record — 1:40.91Athletics

David Rudisha (Kenya) — Led the London Olympic final from gun to tape with no pacemaker. Widely called the greatest 800 m ever run.

Shortest man ever — 54.6 cmBody

Chandra Bahadur Dangi (Nepal) — Found in a remote village at 72, having never been measured in his life.

First solo dive to Challenger DeepExploration

James Cameron (Canada) — Went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench alone in a submersible he helped design.

Largest rover on another planetSpace

Curiosity (USA) — Landed via a rocket-powered sky crane, a manoeuvre nobody had ever attempted.

Most Olympic medals ever — 22Sport

Michael Phelps (USA) — Passed Larisa Latynina's 48-year-old record in London, then extended it to 28 in Rio.

Longest tongue — 10.1 cmBody

Nick Stoeberl (USA) — Measured from tip to closed top lip. He paints with it.

Discovery that completed the Standard ModelTech

Higgs boson / CERN — Announced July 2012 after a 48-year search and the largest machine ever built.

First online video to reach one billion viewsScreen

'Gangnam Style' / PSY — Broke YouTube's view counter, which had been built with a limit of 2.1 billion.

First British winner of the Tour de FranceSport

Bradley Wiggins (UK) — Then won Olympic gold on the same roads ten days later.

20117 records

First Rubik's Cube solve under six seconds — 5.66Odd

Feliks Zemdegs (Australia) — Solved a scrambled 3×3 at the Melbourne Winter Open quicker than most people find the right colour to start on.

World marathon record — 2:03:38Athletics

Patrick Makau (Kenya) — Beat Gebrselassie head-to-head in Berlin, and Gebrselassie dropped out.

First spacecraft to orbit MercurySpace

MESSENGER (USA) — Took six years and six planetary flybys to slow down enough to be captured.

Most consecutive Test wins as a captain of its eraSport

Various — 2011 saw records set across cricket, rugby and football for unbeaten runs.

Shortest man of its era — 57.9 cmBody

Junrey Balawing (Philippines) — Measured on his 18th birthday, the day he became eligible for the adult record.

Most followed account on social media of its eraTech

Lady Gaga — The first person to reach 10 million Twitter followers, a milestone since dwarfed many times over.

Longest winning streak to start a tennis season of the modern eraSport

Novak Djokovic (Serbia) — Won 41 straight matches and three of the four majors.

20109 records

Tallest building — 828 mEngineering

Burj Khalifa, Dubai — Opened January 2010 with 163 floors. More than fifteen years later nothing built anywhere has topped it.

World 800 m record — 1:41.01Athletics

David Rudisha (Kenya) — Broke Kipketer's 13-year-old record twice in eight days.

First sample return from an asteroidSpace

Hayabusa (Japan) — Landed in the Australian outback with grains from Itokawa after a mission that went wrong in nearly every way possible.

Fastest production car — 431 km/hSpeed

Bugatti Veyron Super Sport — 268 mph, and Guinness had to re-certify it after a dispute about speed limiters.

Youngest person to sail solo around the worldEndurance

Jessica Watson (Australia) — Finished at 16 after 210 days alone at sea in a 10 m yacht.

Longest survival undergroundExploration

Chilean miners — Thirty-three men survived 69 days trapped 700 m down, the longest anyone has been stuck underground and lived.

Most people doing the same thing at onceOdd

Various — Mass-participation records exploded through the 2010s, with tens of thousands of people at a time setting them.

First European team to win a World Cup outside EuropeSport

Spain — Won in South Africa having lost their opening match.

Fastest-selling consumer electronics device of its eraTech

Apple iPad (USA) — Three million sold in 80 days, creating a product category that hadn't existed.

20097 records

Fastest 100 m and 200 m ever run — 9.58 and 19.19Athletics

Usain Bolt (Jamaica) — Set four days apart in Berlin. Nobody has come close to either in the 17 years since.

Tallest living man — 2.51 mBody

Sultan Kösen (Turkey) — Verified in 2009 and still the tallest living man; also holds the record for the largest hands.

Highest-grossing film everScreen

Avatar — Passed $2.9 billion, lost the record to Avengers: Endgame in 2019, then took it back on re-release.

Fastest 50 m freestyle — 20.91Swimming

César Cielo (Brazil) — Set in the supersuit era. The suits were banned months later and the record has never been beaten.

World women's pole vault record — 5.06 mAthletics

Yelena Isinbayeva (Russia) — The 28th world record of her career. It stood for 15 years.

Most Grand Slam men's singles titles of its eraSport

Roger Federer (Switzerland) — Passed Pete Sampras's 14 majors at Wimbledon, beginning the three-way race with Nadal and Djokovic.

First cryptocurrencyTech

Bitcoin — The first block was mined in January 2009 with a newspaper headline embedded in it.

20088 records

Most golds at a single Olympics — 8Swimming

Michael Phelps (USA) — Beat a mark that had stood 36 years, taking one of the eight by a hundredth of a second.

World 100 m record — 9.72, then 9.69Athletics

Usain Bolt (Jamaica) — Broke it in New York in May, then again in the Beijing final while slowing down and beating his chest.

World 200 m record — 19.30Athletics

Usain Bolt (Jamaica) — Took Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record in Beijing, into a headwind.

World 4x100 m relay recordAthletics

Jamaica — Beijing quartet ended the USA's 16-year hold on the relay record.

World marathon record — 2:03:59Athletics

Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) — First man under 2:04.

Longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female)Body

Lee Redmond (USA) — Grew them for nearly 30 years to a combined 8.65 m, then lost them all in a car crash.

Largest particle acceleratorEngineering

Large Hadron Collider (CERN) — 27 km around, cooled to 1.9 K — colder than deep space.

Longest Wimbledon final of its eraSport

Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer — Four hours 48 minutes finishing in near darkness, widely called the greatest tennis match ever played.

20076 records

World marathon record — 2:04:26Athletics

Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) — First of two Berlin world records. He'd started out running 10 km to school and back with his books under one arm.

World 100 m record — 9.74Athletics

Asafa Powell (Jamaica) — Set in Rieti, and beaten within a year by Usain Bolt.

Best-selling smartphone line beginsTech

iPhone (USA) — Over 2.3 billion sold since; the highest-selling single consumer electronics product in history.

Most Test runs — new benchmarkSport

Sachin Tendulkar (India) — On his way to 15,921 Test runs and 100 international centuries, both still records.

Tallest living man — 2.36 mBody

Bao Xishun (China) — Held the title until Sultan Kösen was verified two years later.

Most expensive sports transfer of its eraSport

Various — Football transfer fees began the escalation that took them from £30 million to over £200 million in a decade.

20067 records

Most hot dogs eaten in twelve minutes — 53¾Food

Takeru Kobayashi (Japan) — Sixth straight Nathan's title, roughly double what the record had been before he turned up and changed the sport.

Second-highest points total in an NBA game — 81Sport

Kobe Bryant (USA) — The closest anyone has come to Chamberlain in 60 years.

First sample return from a cometSpace

Stardust (USA) — Brought back dust from Comet Wild 2 after a seven-year, five-billion-km round trip.

Most Formula One pole positions record brokenSport

Michael Schumacher (Germany) — Retired with 68 poles and 91 wins, both records at the time.

Most-watched sporting event of its eraScreen

2006 FIFA World Cup final — An estimated 715 million people watched Italy beat France.

Tallest living tree — 115.9 mNature

'Hyperion', California — A coast redwood found in 2006. Its exact location is kept secret to protect it.

Most Grand Slam titles in the Open Era beginsSport

Roger Federer (Switzerland) — 2006 was the year he reached all four major finals, something only three men have ever done.

20057 records

Most distant landing on another worldSpace

Huygens probe (ESA) — Parachuted onto Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005 — 1.2 billion km away — and photographed riverbeds carved by liquid methane.

World 100 m record — 9.77Athletics

Asafa Powell (Jamaica) — Equalled or broke it three times over two years.

World 10,000 m record — 26:17.53Athletics

Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia) — Stood for 15 years, alongside his 5000 m record.

Fastest production car — 408 km/hSpeed

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 (France) — 1,001 horsepower, ten radiators, and a top-speed key you had to insert to unlock it.

First sample returned from an asteroid attemptSpace

Hayabusa (Japan) — Touched down on Itokawa and, after a five-year struggle home, delivered the first asteroid grains ever studied on Earth.

Fastest solo circumnavigation by sail of its eraExploration

Ellen MacArthur (UK) — 71 days 14 hours alone, sleeping in 20-minute bursts and beating the record by 33 hours.

Most-used video platform ever builtTech

YouTube (USA) — Founded 2005; over 500 hours of video are now uploaded to it every minute.

20048 records

First privately funded crewed spaceflightSpace

SpaceShipOne (USA) — Funded by Paul Allen, flown by Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie. Reached space twice in two weeks to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Tallest building — Taipei 101Engineering

Taiwan — 508 m, and the first building to pass half a kilometre.

World 5000 m record — 12:37.35Athletics

Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia) — Held for 16 years.

Longest-serving Mars rovers beginSpace

Spirit & Opportunity (USA) — Designed for 90 days. Opportunity lasted 14 years and drove a marathon's distance across Mars.

Longest hair — 5.62 mBody

Xie Qiuping (China) — Had been growing it since 1973, when she was 13.

Most Olympic medals at a single Games by a gymnastSport

Various — Athens produced record medal hauls across gymnastics and swimming as depth of competition grew.

Only comeback from 3–0 down in a baseball postseason seriesSport

Boston Red Sox (USA) — Beat the Yankees and then ended an 86-year championship drought.

Largest social network ever builtTech

Facebook (USA) — Launched February 2004; over three billion people now use it monthly, roughly a third of humanity.

20037 records

World women's marathon record — 2:15:25Athletics

Paula Radcliffe (UK) — Ran London three minutes faster than any woman before her. It stood for 16 years and is still the fastest women-only-race time debate point.

Third nation to launch a human into spaceSpace

Yang Liwei (China) — Orbited Earth 14 times aboard Shenzhou 5 in October 2003.

World marathon record — 2:04:55Athletics

Paul Tergat (Kenya) — First man under 2:05, in Berlin.

Most Test wickets — 500 and countingSport

Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka) — On his way to 800, a total no bowler has come close to.

Most Oscars won by a single filmScreen

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — Eleven from eleven nominations — the only film to convert every nomination it received.

First social network to hit a million usersTech

MySpace/Friendster era — Online social networks began setting the user-growth records that later platforms would obliterate.

Largest collaborative biology project ever completedTech

Human Genome Project — Finished in April 2003, two years early and under budget, after 13 years and 20 institutions.

20026 records

First solo balloon flight around the worldAviation

Steve Fossett (USA) — Circled the globe alone in just under 14 days on his sixth attempt. The five failures included a 9,000 m fall into the Coral Sea.

Most consecutive Grand Slam finals of its eraSport

Serena Williams (USA) — Held all four major titles at once, the 'Serena Slam' — she did it twice.

World women's marathon record — 2:17:18Athletics

Paula Radcliffe (UK) — Her first world record, in Chicago, on her second attempt at the distance.

Fastest supercomputer of its eraTech

Earth Simulator (Japan) — Held the top spot for two and a half years, longer than any machine since.

Tallest living man of its eraBody

Radhouane Charbib (Tunisia) — Measured at 2.359 m, before the current generation of record holders.

Most World Cup goals of its eraSport

Ronaldo (Brazil) — Scored eight in the 2002 tournament and finished on 15, then a record.

20016 records

First space touristSpace

Dennis Tito (USA) — Paid a reported $20 million for eight days aboard the ISS, over NASA's loud objections.

Most home runs in a season — 73Sport

Barry Bonds (USA) — Broke McGwire's three-year-old record. It still stands, and still divides opinion.

Largest encyclopedia ever compiled beginsTech

Wikipedia — Launched January 2001; now over 60 million articles across 300-plus languages, all written by volunteers.

Fastest film to gross $100 million of its eraScreen

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone — Opened to records on three continents at once.

World women's marathon record — 2:18:47Athletics

Catherine Ndereba (Kenya) — First woman under 2:19.

Best-selling portable music player of its eraTech

Apple iPod (USA) — Over 450 million sold, and it turned a computer company into the largest music retailer in the world.

20007 records

Longest continuous human presence in space beginsSpace

Expedition 1 (USA/Russia) — Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev moved into the ISS on 2 November 2000. There has been at least one human off the planet every day since.

Most world records in a single Olympics of its eraSwimming

Ian Thorpe (Australia) — Won three golds in Sydney at 17 and broke world records in the heats as well as the finals.

Most Olympic medals by a rowerSport

Steve Redgrave (UK) — Won gold at a fifth consecutive Games — unmatched in an endurance sport.

Most-watched television finale of its eraScreen

Various — Reality television arrived and immediately began setting audience records worldwide.

World women's pole vault progressionAthletics

Stacy Dragila / Yelena Isinbayeva — The women's pole vault became an Olympic event and the record fell more than 20 times in a decade.

Largest winning margin in a golf majorSport

Tiger Woods (USA) — Won the US Open at Pebble Beach by 15 strokes — the biggest margin in any major, ever.

Best-selling games console of all timeTech

Sony PlayStation 2 (Japan) — Over 160 million sold across 13 years on sale.

19997 records

First non-stop balloon flight around the worldAviation

Bertrand Piccard & Brian Jones — Flew Breitling Orbiter 3 from Switzerland to Egypt the long way — 19 days, 21 hours, about 40,000 km without touching down.

World mile record — 3:43.13Athletics

Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco) — The fastest mile ever run, and it hasn't been threatened since.

World 100 m record — 9.79Athletics

Maurice Greene (USA) — Took 0.05 off the record in Athens, the biggest single drop in 30 years.

World 400 m record — 43.18Athletics

Michael Johnson (USA) — Stood for 17 years.

World marathon record — 2:05:42Athletics

Khalid Khannouchi (Morocco) — Broke the record in Chicago, then did it again three years later for a different country.

Most Ballon d'Or wins of its eraSport

Various — The late 1990s set the stage for the Messi–Ronaldo era that would rewrite every individual football record.

First English club to win the continental trebleSport

Manchester United — League, FA Cup and Champions League in one season, with two goals in stoppage time to finish it.

19988 records

Tallest buildings — Petronas TowersEngineering

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — 452 m, taking the record out of America for the first time in a century.

Longest suspension bridge — 1,991 mEngineering

Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, Japan — Its central span was stretched a metre by the Kobe earthquake during construction.

First film to gross a billion dollarsScreen

Titanic — Passed $1 billion in March 1998. It was the most expensive film ever made and was widely expected to sink the studio.

World 1500 m record — 3:26.00Athletics

Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco) — Nearly 30 years old and still comfortably the fastest 1500 m ever run.

World marathon record — 2:06:05Athletics

Ronaldo da Costa (Brazil) — Ended Dinsamo's decade-long hold on the record in Berlin.

Most home runs in a season of its eraSport

Mark McGwire (USA) — Hit 70, in a chase with Sammy Sosa that gripped America and was later clouded by doping revelations.

Fastest production car — 386 km/hSpeed

McLaren F1 (UK) — 240 mph with a naturally aspirated engine and a gold-lined engine bay. Held the title seven years.

Most home runs in a season of its eraSport

Sammy Sosa & Mark McGwire — Both passed Roger Maris's 37-year-old record in the same summer, the only time that has happened.

19978 records

First supersonic land speed record — 1,227.985 km/hSpeed

Andy Green (UK) — Drove ThrustSSC across Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the first person to break the sound barrier on the ground. It still stands.

Oldest person ever verified — 122 years 164 daysBody

Jeanne Calment (France) — Born in 1875, she remembered meeting Vincent van Gogh and outlived her own grandson.

Best-selling single since charts beganMusic

Elton John — 'Candle in the Wind 1997' — Sold an estimated 33 million copies, the fastest-selling single in history.

World 800 m record — 1:41.11Athletics

Wilson Kipketer (Denmark) — Broke Coe's 16-year-old record three times in a single summer.

First solo crossing of AntarcticaExploration

Børge Ousland (Norway) — Skied 2,690 km unsupported in 64 days, using a kite to cover ground.

Youngest Masters championSport

Tiger Woods (USA) — Won by 12 strokes at 21, the largest winning margin in the tournament's history.

First computer to beat a world champion in a matchTech

IBM Deep Blue (USA) — Beat Garry Kasparov 3½–2½ in May 1997. Kasparov accused the machine of cheating; it had simply got better.

Best-selling book series ever writtenScreen

Harry Potter / J.K. Rowling (UK) — The first book appeared in 1997 with a print run of 500 copies. The series has sold over 600 million.

19967 records

First computer to beat a reigning world chess championTech

IBM Deep Blue (USA) — Took a game off Garry Kasparov under tournament conditions in February 1996. Kasparov won the match, then lost the rematch a year later.

World 200 m record — 19.32Athletics

Michael Johnson (USA) — Took an unthinkable 0.34 off his own record in the Atlanta final, running in gold shoes.

World 100 m record — 9.84Athletics

Donovan Bailey (Canada) — Won Olympic gold in Atlanta in world record time.

World javelin record — 98.48 mAthletics

Jan Železný (Czech Republic) — Nearly 30 years old, and no one has thrown within three metres.

Deadliest season on Everest of its eraMountains

1996 Everest disaster — Eight people died in a single storm, and the season reset how commercial expeditions were run.

Most Olympic golds by a track athlete of its eraSport

Carl Lewis (USA) — Won his ninth and final gold in Atlanta, taking the long jump for the fourth Games running.

First cloned mammalTech

Dolly the sheep (UK) — Born July 1996 at the Roslin Institute from an adult cell, which had been considered impossible.

19956 records

Longest triple jump — 18.29 mAthletics

Jonathan Edwards (UK) — Jumped it twice in one afternoon in Gothenburg, breaking his own world record on both attempts. Thirty years on, nobody has matched it.

World women's triple jump record — 15.50 mAthletics

Inessa Kravets (Ukraine) — Set at the same championships, and also still standing.

Most consecutive games played in baseballSport

Cal Ripken Jr. (USA) — Played his 2,131st straight game, breaking a record thought untouchable since 1939. He finished on 2,632.

Largest software launch of its eraTech

Windows 95 (USA) — Sold seven million copies in five weeks and put personal computers in ordinary homes.

Youngest Formula One world champion of its eraSport

Michael Schumacher (Germany) — Second title in two years, and the start of the most dominant career in the sport's history.

First athlete to hold the 200 m and 400 m world titles simultaneouslySport

Michael Johnson (USA) — A double nobody had managed, and he repeated it at the Olympics a year later.

19947 records

Longest undersea tunnelEngineering

Channel Tunnel (UK/France) — Opened May 1994 with a 37.9 km stretch beneath the seabed — still the longest undersea section anywhere. Six years, 13,000 workers.

World pole vault record — 6.14 mAthletics

Sergey Bubka (Ukraine) — His 35th and final world record. It stood for 26 years.

World 100 m record — 9.85Athletics

Leroy Burrell (USA) — Set in Lausanne, and beaten within two years.

Longest single spaceflight — 437 daysSpace

Valeri Polyakov (Russia) — Spent 14 months continuously aboard Mir and walked away from the capsule unaided. Still the record.

Most Formula One championships of its era beginsSport

Michael Schumacher (Germany) — First of seven titles, a record that stood alone for 16 years.

Most consecutive Formula One race wins from pole of its eraSport

Various — 1994's season was overshadowed by Ayrton Senna's death at Imola, which changed motorsport safety permanently.

Best-selling console of its generationTech

Sony PlayStation (Japan) — Launched December 1994 and sold over 102 million, the first console ever to pass 100 million.

19936 records

Highest high jump — 2.45 mAthletics

Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) — Cleared roughly 30 cm above his own head in Salamanca. The bar hasn't moved since.

World mile record — 3:44.39Athletics

Noureddine Morceli (Algeria) — Took nearly two seconds off Cram's eight-year-old record.

Highest-grossing film of its eraScreen

Jurassic Park — Passed $900 million and made computer-generated creatures the industry standard.

First solo unsupported trek to the South PoleExploration

Erling Kagge (Norway) — Walked 1,310 km in 50 days pulling everything he needed behind him.

Most Test runs of its eraSport

Allan Border (Australia) — Retired with 11,174 Test runs and 153 consecutive Tests, a streak nobody has approached.

Browser that made the web mainstreamTech

Mosaic (USA) — Web traffic grew by an estimated 340,000% in the year after its release.

19926 records

Fastest production car — 349 km/hSpeed

Jaguar XJ220 (UK) — 217 mph at Nardò, taking the title off Ferrari's F40 and holding it for the rest of the decade.

Most dominant Olympic basketball teamSport

USA 'Dream Team' — Won by an average of 44 points and never called a time-out.

World 4x100 m relay record — 37.40Athletics

USA — Stood for 16 years until Jamaica's Beijing quartet.

Most Olympic gold medals by a swimmer of its eraSwimming

Matt Biondi (USA) — Finished his career with 11 Olympic medals, eight of them gold.

First text messageTech

Neil Papworth (UK) — Typed 'Merry Christmas' on a computer and sent it to a phone. Trillions have followed.

Largest living organism ever identifiedNature

Armillaria fungus, Oregon — A single honey fungus covering 9.6 km² and thought to be over 2,000 years old.

19916 records

Longest long jump — 8.95 mAthletics

Mike Powell (USA) — Finally beat Beamon's 23-year-old mark in Tokyo, in a head-to-head with Carl Lewis both men called the best day of their lives.

World 100 m record — 9.86Athletics

Carl Lewis (USA) — Set in the Tokyo world final where six men went under 9.96.

First webpage goes publicTech

CERN — The web opened to the world in August 1991, with one site and one server.

Most wickets in Test cricket of its eraSport

Richard Hadlee (New Zealand) — Retired in 1990 as the first bowler to 431 Test wickets, resetting the benchmark.

Longest single spaceflight beginsSpace

Sergei Krikalev (USSR) — Launched from the Soviet Union and landed ten months later in a country that no longer existed.

Most widely used operating system kernel ever writtenTech

Linux / Linus Torvalds (Finland) — Released in 1991 as a hobby project. It now runs most of the internet, all 500 top supercomputers, and every Android phone.

19906 records

The first websiteTech

Tim Berners-Lee (UK) — Built the first web server and web page at CERN in December 1990, on a NeXT machine with a note taped to it reading 'do not power down'.

Largest space telescope of its eraSpace

Hubble (USA/ESA) — Launched with a flawed mirror, fixed by spacewalking astronauts in 1993, and still working 35 years later.

Deepest borehole — 12,262 mExploration

Kola Superdeep (USSR) — Drilling stopped when the rock got too hot and behaved like plastic. It is still the deepest hole ever made.

Most consecutive Grand Slam titles by a teenagerSport

Monica Seles (Yugoslavia) — Won eight majors before she turned 20.

World indoor pole vault progressionAthletics

Sergey Bubka (USSR/Ukraine) — Bubka broke the pole vault world record 35 times between 1984 and 1994, usually by a single centimetre at a time.

Most expensive painting sold at auctionScreen

Van Gogh's 'Portrait of Dr Gachet' — $82.5 million in 1990 — a record that stood for 14 years.

19896 records

Only spacecraft to visit all four giant planetsSpace

Voyager 2 (USA) — Swept past Neptune in August 1989, completing a grand tour no craft has repeated.

Most points in an NBA career of its eraSport

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (USA) — Retired with 38,387 points, a record that stood 34 years.

Fastest indoor mile — 3:48.45Athletics

Eamonn Coghlan (Ireland) — 'The Chairman of the Boards' set indoor mile records nobody beat for over 20 years.

World Wide Web proposedTech

Tim Berners-Lee (UK) — His March 1989 memo at CERN was marked 'vague but exciting' by his boss.

Youngest Formula One world champion of its eraSport

Ayrton Senna (Brazil) — Senna's 65 pole positions stood as the record for 17 years.

Best-selling handheld games console of its eraTech

Nintendo Game Boy (Japan) — Sold 118 million units on a screen with four shades of grey.

19887 records

World women's 100 m record — 10.49Athletics

Florence Griffith-Joyner (USA) — Nearly four decades later nobody has run within a tenth of it.

World women's 200 m record — 21.34Athletics

Florence Griffith-Joyner (USA) — Set in the Seoul Olympic final. Also still standing.

World heptathlon record — 7,291 pointsAthletics

Jackie Joyner-Kersee (USA) — Untouched since, and by some distance the greatest multi-event performance by a woman.

World women's long jump record — 7.52 mAthletics

Galina Chistyakova (USSR) — Another Seoul-era record still on the books.

World marathon record — 2:06:50Athletics

Belayneh Dinsamo (Ethiopia) — Stood for a decade — the longest any men's marathon record has lasted in the modern era.

Most Olympic swimming golds by a woman of its eraSwimming

Kristin Otto (East Germany) — Won six golds in Seoul, a record for a woman at a single Games.

Only Golden Slam in tennis historySport

Steffi Graf (West Germany) — Won all four majors and Olympic gold in the same calendar year. No one else, male or female, has done it.

19876 records

First swim across the Bering StraitEndurance

Lynne Cox (USA) — Swam 4.3 km through 4°C water from Alaska's Little Diomede to Soviet Big Diomede. Reagan and Gorbachev toasted the swim at the INF Treaty signing.

World women's high jump record — 2.09 mAthletics

Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) — Still standing after nearly four decades.

Fastest production car of its eraSpeed

Ferrari F40 — 201 mph, and the last car Enzo Ferrari personally signed off.

Most consecutive America's Cup defences endsSport

Dennis Conner (USA) — The 132-year New York Yacht Club streak — the longest winning streak in sport — had ended in 1983; Conner won it back in 1987.

Largest gathering of people named the same thingOdd

Various — The 1980s saw Guinness formalise mass-participation records, a category that now runs to thousands of titles.

Most expensive painting sold at auction of its eraScreen

Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' — Sold for £24.75 million in 1987, roughly four times the previous record for any work of art.

19867 records

First non-stop unrefuelled flight around the worldAviation

Dick Rutan & Jeana Yeager — Flew the aircraft Voyager for 9 days, taking turns lying down in a cabin the size of a phone box.

First to climb all fourteen 8,000 m peaksMountains

Reinhold Messner (Italy) — Completed the set with Lhotse, having climbed most of them without supplemental oxygen.

World hammer throw record — 86.74 mAthletics

Yuriy Sedykh (USSR) — Nearly 40 years old and nobody has come within two metres.

World discus record — 74.08 mAthletics

Jürgen Schult (East Germany) — The longest-standing record in the men's throwing events.

First permanently crewed space stationSpace

Mir (USSR) — Stayed in orbit 15 years and hosted 28 long-duration crews.

The Hand of God and the Goal of the CenturySport

Diego Maradona (Argentina) — Scored both in the same quarter-final, four minutes apart. The second was voted the greatest World Cup goal ever.

Largest comeback in a golf major of its eraSport

Jack Nicklaus (USA) — Won the Masters at 46, the oldest champion in the tournament's history — a record that stood 26 years.

19857 records

Largest live television audience of its eraMusic

Live Aid — Broadcast from London and Philadelphia to an estimated 1.9 billion people in 150 countries, raising well over £100 million.

World mile record — 3:46.32Athletics

Steve Cram (UK) — Held for eight years, the third British mile record in five years.

World women's 400 m record — 47.60Athletics

Marita Koch (East Germany) — Forty years old and still standing, by well over half a second.

Wreck of the Titanic foundExploration

Robert Ballard & Jean-Louis Michel — Located 3,800 m down after a 73-year search.

Youngest Wimbledon men's singles championSport

Boris Becker (West Germany) — Won at 17 years 227 days, unseeded. Still the youngest.

First registered .com domainTech

symbolics.com (USA) — Registered March 1985. There are now well over 150 million .com domains.

Best-selling video game of its eraTech

Super Mario Bros. (Japan) — Over 40 million copies, and it rescued a games industry that had just collapsed.

19846 records

First untethered spacewalkSpace

Bruce McCandless II (USA) — Flew a nitrogen-jet backpack 98 m from Space Shuttle Challenger — the first human to orbit Earth as a satellite of his own.

First woman to walk in spaceSpace

Svetlana Savitskaya (USSR) — Spent 3 hr 35 min outside Salyut 7, welding in orbit.

Perfect 10s across an entire Olympic programmeSport

Mary Lou Retton / Ecaterina Szabo — Los Angeles produced more perfect scores than any Games before or since.

World women's marathon record and first Olympic women's marathonAthletics

Joan Benoit (USA) — Won the first ever Olympic women's marathon in Los Angeles, an event officials had argued women couldn't finish.

Most Oscars won by one personScreen

Walt Disney (USA) — His career total of 22 competitive Academy Awards has never been approached.

Most ported video game ever madeTech

Tetris / Alexey Pajitnov (USSR) — Written on an Elektronika 60 in Moscow, it has since appeared on over 65 platforms and sold over 500 million copies.

19837 records

Best-selling album of all timeMusic

Michael Jackson — Thriller — Spent 37 weeks at number one in the US. At an estimated 70 million copies it has never lost the Guinness title.

World 100 m record — 9.93Athletics

Calvin Smith (USA) — First man to legally better Jim Hines's 15-year-old mark.

World women's 800 m record — 1:53.28Athletics

Jarmila Kratochvílová (Czechoslovakia) — The oldest world record in athletics — over 40 years old and still standing.

Land speed record — 1,019 km/hSpeed

Richard Noble (UK) — Thrust2 took the record back to Britain after 13 years in American hands.

First American woman in spaceSpace

Sally Ride (USA) — Flew on Challenger, 20 years after Tereshkova.

First commercial mobile phoneTech

Motorola DynaTAC (USA) — Cost $3,995, weighed 790 g and gave you 30 minutes of talk time for ten hours of charging.

End of the longest winning streak in sportSport

Australia II — Won the America's Cup, ending 132 years of unbroken New York Yacht Club defences — the longest streak in the history of sport.

19826 records

First circumnavigation of the globe via both polesExploration

Ranulph Fiennes & Charles Burton — Finished the three-year Transglobe Expedition in August 1982, crossing both poles travelling only over the surface of the Earth.

Most Academy Award acting winsScreen

Katharine Hepburn (USA) — Her fourth Best Actress Oscar, for On Golden Pond. No performer has won more.

Highest-grossing film of its eraScreen

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — Took over $700 million and held the record until Jurassic Park.

Most goals in a single World Cup match by one playerSport

Various — Hungary's 10–1 win over El Salvador in 1982 remains the biggest margin in World Cup finals history.

Longest recorded human hair beginsBody

Xie Qiuping (China) — Started growing her hair in 1973; it was measured at 5.62 m in 2004.

Format that became the best-selling audio medium of its eraTech

Compact Disc (Japan/Netherlands) — The first CD went on sale in October 1982; over 200 billion have been sold.

19817 records

First reusable spacecraftSpace

Space Shuttle Columbia (USA) — Launched April 1981 and landed on a runway two days later, ready to fly again. It made 27 more flights.

World mile record — 3:47.33Athletics

Sebastian Coe (UK) — The last of three mile records in ten days between Coe and Ovett. Coe's stood four years.

World 800 m record — 1:41.73Athletics

Sebastian Coe (UK) — Held for 16 years and still one of the greatest middle-distance runs ever recorded.

First portable computerTech

Osborne 1 (USA) — Weighed 11 kg and had a five-inch screen, but you could carry it — just.

Longest run at number one of its eraMusic

'Bette Davis Eyes' / Kim Carnes — Nine weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in a year of unusually fast turnover.

Most-watched wedding broadcastScreen

Charles & Diana — An estimated 750 million people in 74 countries watched the 1981 ceremony live.

Machine that set the personal computer standardTech

IBM PC (USA) — Its open architecture meant anyone could clone it — and nearly every PC since descends from it.

19806 records

First solo Everest ascent without oxygenMountains

Reinhold Messner (Italy) — Climbed alone, in monsoon season, with no bottled oxygen, rope team or fixed camps. He described feeling like 'a single narrow gasping lung'.

Youngest Wimbledon men's champion of the modern eraSport

Björn Borg (Sweden) — Won a fifth straight Wimbledon in 1980, a streak nobody matched for 27 years.

World mile record — 3:48.8Athletics

Steve Ovett (UK) — Traded the mile and 1500 m records with Sebastian Coe four times in 14 months — the most intense rivalry the event has seen.

First spacecraft to observe Saturn's moons in detailSpace

Voyager 1 (USA) — Its Titan flyby cost it any chance of reaching Pluto, and was judged worth it.

Longest tennis tie-break in a Wimbledon finalSport

Borg vs McEnroe — The 18–16 fourth-set tie-break is still the most famous single game in tennis.

Highest-grossing arcade game everTech

Pac-Man (Japan) — An estimated $14 billion in revenue and the most recognised video game character on earth.

19796 records

First human-powered flight across the English ChannelAviation

Bryan Allen (USA) — Pedalled the Gossamer Albatross 35 km in 2 hr 49 min, flying a few feet above the water the whole way.

World 200 m record — 19.72Athletics

Pietro Mennea (Italy) — Set at altitude in Mexico City, it stood for almost 17 years.

First flyby of SaturnSpace

Pioneer 11 (USA) — Passed within 21,000 km of the cloud tops and found a new ring.

Most consecutive Tour de France finishes on the podiumSport

Bernard Hinault (France) — Began a five-Tour run that put him level with Anquetil and Merckx.

Longest-running science fiction franchise begins its record runScreen

Star Trek / Star Wars — Both franchises entered the record books in the late 1970s for merchandising and box-office totals.

Best-selling portable audio playerTech

Sony Walkman (Japan) — Over 400 million sold across all formats, and it invented listening to music while walking around.

19787 records

First Everest ascent without supplemental oxygenMountains

Reinhold Messner & Peter Habeler — Doctors had said the brain damage would be irreversible. They summited on 8 May 1978 and walked down.

First solo journey to the North PoleExploration

Naomi Uemura (Japan) — Travelled 725 km alone by dog sled across shifting Arctic ice, fighting off a polar bear that ate most of his food.

Water speed record — 511 km/hSpeed

Ken Warby (Australia) — Set in a wooden boat he built in his own backyard. Nearly 50 years on it has never been beaten.

World marathon record — 2:09:05Athletics

Shigeru So / Gerard Nijboer era — The men's marathon record began falling in seconds rather than minutes as training science caught up.

Heaviest human ever recordedBody

Jon Brower Minnoch (USA) — Weighed an estimated 635 kg. It took a dozen firefighters to move him to hospital.

First baby born by IVFTech

Louise Brown (UK) — Born July 1978. Over 12 million people have since been born the same way.

Highest-grossing arcade game of its eraTech

Space Invaders (Japan) — Took an estimated $3.8 billion in coins and caused a national shortage of 100-yen pieces.

19777 records

Most distant human-made objectSpace

Voyager 1 (USA) — Launched September 1977 carrying a golden record of Earth's sounds. Now over 25 billion km away and still calling home.

Only spacecraft to visit all four giant planets launchesSpace

Voyager 2 (USA) — Launched two weeks before Voyager 1 on a grand tour made possible by an alignment that recurs every 175 years.

First human-powered flight of a figure-eight courseAviation

Bryan Allen (USA) — Pedalled the Gossamer Condor to win the Kremer Prize, unclaimed for 18 years.

Most Test wickets of its eraSport

Lance Gibbs (West Indies) — Became the first spinner to 300 Test wickets, a mark that reset what was thought possible.

Best-selling single of its eraMusic

'Mull of Kintyre' / Wings — The first UK single to sell over two million copies.

Highest-grossing film of its eraScreen

Star Wars — Took over $775 million across its releases and created the modern merchandising record book.

First mass-market personal computerTech

Apple II (USA) — Sold for six years and made the home computer an ordinary object.

19767 records

First perfect 10 in Olympic gymnasticsSport

Nadia Comăneci (Romania) — Aged 14, she scored 10.0 on the uneven bars in Montreal. The scoreboard couldn't display it and flashed 1.00. She scored six more.

Fastest air-breathing aircraft — 3,529 km/hAviation

SR-71 Blackbird (USA) — Set the absolute speed record for a jet in July 1976. Still unbeaten.

First supersonic passenger serviceAviation

Concorde (UK/France) — Cut the Atlantic to under three and a half hours. No airliner since has flown supersonic with passengers.

First successful Mars landingSpace

Viking 1 (USA) — Touched down on Chryse Planitia in July 1976 and kept working for six years.

World 800 m record — 1:43.50Athletics

Alberto Juantorena (Cuba) — Won the Olympic 400 m and 800 m double, the only man ever to do it.

Fastest women's marathon of its eraAthletics

Chantal Langlacé (France) — The women's marathon record fell repeatedly through the 1970s as the event was finally taken seriously.

Most consecutive Olympic team golds of its eraSport

Various — Montreal saw dynasties in gymnastics, swimming and rowing set streak records that lasted decades.

19756 records

First woman to summit EverestMountains

Junko Tabei (Japan) — Reached the top on 16 May 1975, twelve days after an avalanche buried her camp and she had to be dug out unconscious.

Highest-grossing film of its eraScreen

Jaws (USA) — Took over $470 million on a broken mechanical shark and a two-note theme, and invented the summer blockbuster.

World mile record — 3:49.4Athletics

John Walker (New Zealand) — First man under 3:50 for the mile.

First soft landing on Venus with picturesSpace

Venera 9 (USSR) — Survived 53 minutes in 475°C heat and crushing pressure to send back the first image from the surface of another planet.

First international crewed dockingSpace

Apollo–Soyuz (USA/USSR) — American and Soviet crews shook hands in orbit at the height of the Cold War.

First Cricket World CupSport

West Indies — Won the inaugural tournament at Lord's, and the next one too.

19746 records

Best-selling puzzle toy ever madeOdd

Ernő Rubik (Hungary) — An architecture lecturer in Budapest built the first Cube as a teaching aid — then took a month to solve it himself. Over 350 million sold.

Tallest building — Sears TowerEngineering

Chicago, USA — 442 m, and it held the record for 24 years, longer than any building since the Empire State.

The Rumble in the JungleSport

Muhammad Ali (USA) — Regained the heavyweight title at 32 against George Foreman in Kinshasa, watched by an estimated one billion people.

World 5000 m and 10000 m recordsAthletics

Emiel Puttemans / Dave Bedford — Bedford's 10,000 m record of 27:30.80 stood for four years and was run entirely from the front.

Longest fingernails beginsOdd

Shridhar Chillal (India) — Started growing the nails on his left hand in 1952; by the mid-1970s he was already record-listed. They eventually reached 9.09 m combined.

Most complete early hominid skeleton of its eraExploration

'Lucy' / Donald Johanson — A 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus found in Ethiopia, 40% complete, that rewrote human origins.

19736 records

Fastest mile and a half on dirt — 2:24Sport

Secretariat (USA) — Won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. No thoroughbred has come near the time or the margin in half a century.

Triple Crown with records in all three racesSport

Secretariat (USA) — Set track records at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont — the only horse ever to do it.

Tallest building — World Trade CenterEngineering

New York, USA — The Twin Towers took the title at 417 m, and lost it a year later.

Battle of the SexesSport

Billie Jean King (USA) — Beat Bobby Riggs in front of 90 million television viewers, then the largest audience ever for a tennis match.

First flyby of JupiterSpace

Pioneer 10 (USA) — Also became the first craft on a trajectory out of the solar system.

First handheld mobile phone callTech

Martin Cooper (USA) — Made it on a New York street to his rival at Bell Labs, to tell him he'd lost.

19726 records

Most golds at one Olympics of its era — 7Swimming

Mark Spitz (USA) — Won seven swimming titles in Munich and set a world record in every single one of them. The mark stood 36 years.

Youngest world chess champion of the modern eraSport

Bobby Fischer (USA) — Beat Boris Spassky in Reykjavík, ending 24 years of Soviet dominance, then never defended the title.

Only undefeated season in NFL historySport

Miami Dolphins (USA) — 17–0 including the Super Bowl. No team has done it in the 50-plus seasons since.

Last humans on the MoonSpace

Gene Cernan & Harrison Schmitt — Apollo 17 stayed three days and drove 36 km. Nobody has been back since.

First commercially successful video gameTech

Pong / Atari (USA) — The arcade cabinet that started a industry now worth more than film and music combined.

First home video game consoleTech

Magnavox Odyssey (USA) — You taped plastic overlays to your television screen. It sold 350,000 units and started everything.

19716 records

First spacecraft to orbit another planetSpace

Mariner 9 (USA) — Reached Mars in November 1971, waited out a planet-wide dust storm, then mapped 85% of the surface and found the solar system's largest volcano.

First space stationSpace

Salyut 1 (USSR) — Launched in April 1971. Its first crew died on re-entry when a valve failed, and it was abandoned.

Longest drive on another worldSpace

Apollo 15 crew (USA) — David Scott and James Irwin drove the first lunar rover 27.9 km across the Hadley plain.

World mile record — 3:51.1Athletics

Jim Ryun (USA) — Ryun's mile records made him the first high-schooler to break four minutes and dominated the event for years.

First microprocessorTech

Intel 4004 (USA) — 2,300 transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail, with the computing power of ENIAC.

First email sent between computersTech

Ray Tomlinson (USA) — He also chose the @ symbol, because it was the only one on the keyboard nobody was using.

19706 records

Farthest any human has been from Earth — 400,171 kmSpace

Apollo 13 crew (USA) — The crippled ship swung around the far side of the Moon to slingshot home. Nobody has ever been further, and it wasn't on purpose.

First robotic sample return from another worldSpace

Luna 16 (USSR) — Scooped 101 g of lunar soil and flew it back to Earth with no crew involved.

First rover on another worldSpace

Lunokhod 1 (USSR) — Drove 10 km across the Moon over ten months, controlled by a five-man team on Earth.

Land speed record — 1,014 km/hSpeed

Gary Gabelich (USA) — The rocket-powered Blue Flame took the record past 1,000 km/h and held it for 13 years.

Most Formula One wins in a season of its eraSport

Jochen Rindt (Austria) — Became the only posthumous F1 world champion after his death at Monza.

First nation to win three World CupsSport

Brazil — Won in Mexico with a team still widely regarded as the greatest ever assembled.

19697 records

First humans on the MoonSpace

Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin — Walked on the surface on 20 July 1969 while Michael Collins orbited alone overhead.

Fastest humans have ever travelled — 39,937 km/hSpace

Apollo 10 crew (USA) — Stafford, Young and Cernan hit that speed returning from the Moon in May 1969. The record still stands.

First supersonic airliner flightAviation

Concorde (UK/France) — Prototype 001 flew in March 1969; Concorde went on to hold the transatlantic passenger record at 2 hr 52 min.

Most consecutive Grand Slam singles titles in a calendar yearSport

Rod Laver (Australia) — Completed his second calendar Grand Slam — still the only man to have done it twice.

First solo non-stop circumnavigation by sailExploration

Robin Knox-Johnston (UK) — 313 days alone at sea, the only finisher of nine starters in the Golden Globe Race.

First message sent over a computer networkTech

ARPANET (USA) — They tried to type 'LOGIN'. The system crashed after 'LO'. It became the internet anyway.

Largest passenger aircraft of its eraAviation

Boeing 747 — First flew February 1969 and held the passenger record for 37 years until the A380.

19687 records

Longest long jump of its era — 8.90 mAthletics

Bob Beamon (USA) — Beat the world record by 55 cm in one attempt in Mexico City. The officials' measuring rail didn't reach far enough. Still the Olympic record.

First electronically timed sub-10 second 100 mAthletics

Jim Hines (USA) — Ran 9.95 in Mexico City — a record that would stand for 15 years.

World 400 m record — 43.86Athletics

Lee Evans (USA) — Held for 20 years, and set in the same thin Mexico City air that produced Beamon's jump.

The Fosbury FlopAthletics

Dick Fosbury (USA) — Won Olympic gold going over backwards. Within a decade essentially every high jumper on earth had copied him.

First humans to leave Earth orbitSpace

Apollo 8 (USA) — Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first people to orbit the Moon and see the Earth rise over it.

Largest aircraft of its eraAviation

Antonov An-22 / Boeing 747 programme — The wide-body era began; the 747 rollout the following year set passenger records that stood for 37 years.

Most golds by a gymnast at one Olympics of its eraSport

Věra Čáslavská (Czechoslovakia) — Won four golds in Mexico City weeks after the Soviet invasion of her country, and looked away during the anthem.

19675 records

Fastest solo circumnavigation by sailExploration

Sir Francis Chichester (UK) — Sailed round the world single-handed with one stop, aged 65, in 226 days. Knighted with the sword used on Sir Francis Drake.

Fastest crewed aircraft — 7,274 km/hAviation

William 'Pete' Knight (USA) — Flew the X-15 at Mach 6.7. Almost 60 years later, no piloted aircraft has gone faster.

First marathon under 2:10Athletics

Derek Clayton (Australia) — Ran 2:09:36 in Fukuoka, breaking a barrier people had argued was the human limit.

First woman to run the Boston Marathon with a numberSport

Kathrine Switzer (USA) — An official tried to physically drag her off the course. Women were formally allowed in five years later.

First human heart transplantTech

Christiaan Barnard (South Africa) — Performed in Cape Town in December 1967. The patient lived 18 days, and the field was born.

19666 records

First spacecraft to reach another planetSpace

Venera 3 (USSR) — Struck Venus in March 1966 — the first human object to touch another planet's surface, though its instruments had already failed.

First soft landing on the MoonSpace

Luna 9 (USSR) — Sent back the first photographs taken from the surface of another world.

First docking of two spacecraftSpace

Neil Armstrong & David Scott — Gemini 8 docked with an Agena target — then span out of control, and Armstrong saved it.

Youngest boxing world heavyweight champion of its eraSport

Muhammad Ali (USA) — Ali's run through 1966 included five title defences in a single year, a pace no heavyweight has matched since.

Only hat-trick in a World Cup finalSport

Geoff Hurst (England) — Scored three in the 1966 final at Wembley. Sixty years on, nobody else has managed one.

First rowing crossing of the Atlantic in the modern eraEndurance

John Ridgway & Chay Blyth — Rowed 5,000 km in an open 6 m dory in 92 days, with no support boat.

19656 records

First spacewalkSpace

Alexei Leonov (USSR) — Spent 12 minutes outside Voskhod 2. His suit ballooned in vacuum and he had to bleed off air to squeeze back through the hatch.

First orbital rendezvousSpace

Gemini 6A & 7 (USA) — Two crewed spacecraft flew in formation a foot apart, proving the manoeuvre Apollo would depend on.

Longest spaceflight of its era — 14 daysSpace

Frank Borman & Jim Lovell — Gemini 7 stayed up two weeks to prove humans could survive a lunar round trip.

Land speed record — 600 mphSpeed

Craig Breedlove (USA) — Spirit of America Sonic 1 became the first car past 600 mph, ending the year-long duel with Art Arfons.

World mile record — 3:53.6Athletics

Michel Jazy (France) — Took the record to France for the first time.

First commercial communications satelliteTech

Intelsat I 'Early Bird' — Carried television, telephone and fax across the Atlantic from geostationary orbit.

19646 records

Only person to set land and water speed records in the same yearSpeed

Donald Campbell (UK) — 648 km/h on Australia's Lake Eyre salt flats in July, 444 km/h on water in December. Nobody has repeated the double.

Back-to-back Olympic marathon goldsSport

Abebe Bikila (Ethiopia) — Won Tokyo in a world best 2:12:11 — six weeks after having his appendix out.

Land speed record — 536 mphSpeed

Art Arfons (USA) — Green Monster traded the record back and forth with Breedlove three times in a single autumn.

First multi-person spacecraftSpace

Voskhod 1 (USSR) — Three cosmonauts crammed into a capsule built for one, without spacesuits, because there wasn't room.

Fastest-selling car in historyOdd

Ford Mustang (USA) — 418,000 sold in its first year — a launch record for the motor industry.

First Olympics broadcast live by satelliteTech

Tokyo 1964 — Pictures reached North America in real time for the first time in Olympic history.

19635 records

First woman in spaceSpace

Valentina Tereshkova (USSR) — A 26-year-old textile worker and amateur parachutist, she orbited Earth 48 times alone. Still the only woman to have flown a solo space mission.

Highest flight by a winged aircraft — 107.8 kmAviation

Joseph Walker (USA) — Flew the X-15 above the Kármán line, technically making him an astronaut in a plane.

Land speed record — 407 mphSpeed

Craig Breedlove (USA) — Spirit of America was jet-powered and three-wheeled, which caused a long argument about whether it counted. It did.

First ascent of Everest's West RidgeMountains

Willi Unsoeld & Tom Hornbein — Climbed an unclimbed face and descended the other side — the first traverse of the mountain.

Youngest Masters champion of its eraSport

Jack Nicklaus (USA) — Won at 23, on his way to a record 18 major championships that stood for over 40 years.

19625 records

Most points in an NBA game — 100Sport

Wilt Chamberlain (USA) — Scored a hundred against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania. No film of it survives, and in 60-odd years nobody has come within 19.

Most rebounds in a season — 2,149Sport

Wilt Chamberlain (USA) — He also averaged 50.4 points per game across the same season. Both marks are untouched.

World 800 m record — 1:44.3Athletics

Peter Snell (New Zealand) — Set on a grass track in Christchurch, which makes it one of the strangest world records on the books.

First interplanetary flybySpace

Mariner 2 (USA) — Passed Venus in December 1962, the first spacecraft to successfully study another planet up close.

First transatlantic television broadcastTech

Telstar (USA) — Beamed live pictures across the ocean in July 1962 and changed what 'live' meant.

19615 records

First human in spaceSpace

Yuri Gagarin (USSR) — Orbited Earth once in 108 minutes on 12 April 1961, then ejected and parachuted into a field where a farmer and her daughter found him.

First person to spend a day in spaceSpace

Gherman Titov (USSR) — Vostok 2 made 17 orbits in 25 hours. At 25 he is still the youngest person ever to fly in space.

Most home runs in a season — 61Sport

Roger Maris (USA) — Broke Babe Ruth's 34-year-old record of 60 on the last day of the season.

World mile record — 3:54.4Athletics

Peter Snell (New Zealand) — The New Zealander shaved a tenth off Herb Elliott's mark and went on to Olympic doubles.

Most runs in an English cricket season of its eraSport

Various — The early 1960s produced batting aggregates that the shortened modern calendar makes unrepeatable.

19606 records

Deepest ocean descent — 10,916 mExploration

Jacques Piccard & Don Walsh — Took the bathyscaphe Trieste to the floor of the Mariana Trench. A window cracked on the way down; they carried on.

First Olympic marathon won barefootAthletics

Abebe Bikila (Ethiopia) — Ran Rome in 2:15:16 with no shoes, setting a world best and becoming the first Black African Olympic champion.

World 100 m record — 10.0 secondsAthletics

Armin Hary (West Germany) — First man officially timed at ten flat, breaking a barrier that had stood for over 20 years.

Highest parachute jump of its era — 31,300 mAviation

Joseph Kittinger (USA) — Stepped out of a balloon gondola at the edge of space and fell for 4 min 36 sec. The record stood 52 years.

Most consecutive Olympic marathon wins beginsSport

Abebe Bikila — He would win again in Tokyo in 1964 — the first man to take back-to-back Olympic marathons.

First working laserTech

Theodore Maiman (USA) — Built in May 1960 and dismissed at the time as 'a solution looking for a problem'.

19595 records

First human-made object to reach another worldSpace

Luna 2 (USSR) — Crashed into the Moon in September 1959, scattering metal pennants stamped with the Soviet coat of arms.

First photographs of the Moon's far sideSpace

Luna 3 (USSR) — Sent back 29 grainy images of a hemisphere no human being had ever seen.

Best-selling toy line beginsOdd

Barbie (USA) — Launched in March 1959; over a billion have since been sold, making it the best-selling doll in history.

Water speed record — 260 mphSpeed

Donald Campbell (UK) — Fifth straight year holding the outright water speed record.

First hovercraft crossing of the English ChannelAviation

SR-N1 (UK) — Crossed in July 1959, on the 50th anniversary of Blériot's flight.

19587 records

Youngest World Cup winnerSport

Pelé (Brazil) — Won the final aged 17 years 249 days, scoring twice against Sweden and crying on the pitch. He'd been a squad afterthought weeks earlier.

First surface crossing of AntarcticaExploration

Vivian Fuchs & Edmund Hillary — The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition covered 3,473 km in 99 days — the first land crossing of the continent.

First submarine to reach the North PoleExploration

USS Nautilus (USA) — Sailed under the polar ice cap in August 1958, proving a submerged transit of the Arctic was possible.

World mile record — 3:54.5Athletics

Herb Elliott (Australia) — The Australian took the mile record and never lost a final over the mile or 1500 m in his career.

Water speed record — 248 mphSpeed

Donald Campbell (UK) — Fourth in a row.

Fastest-selling toy fad ever recordedOdd

Hula Hoop / Wham-O — 25 million sold in four months in 1958 — a rate no toy has matched before or since.

Most-produced toy in history beginsOdd

LEGO brick (Denmark) — The modern interlocking brick was patented in January 1958. Well over a trillion have been made.

19575 records

First artificial satelliteSpace

Sputnik 1 (USSR) — A 58 cm metal sphere launched on 4 October 1957 that did nothing but beep — and amateur radio operators worldwide could hear it pass overhead.

First animal in orbitSpace

Laika (USSR) — The stray dog flew on Sputnik 2 a month later. She did not survive, and the mission changed how spaceflight was argued about.

First non-stop round-the-world jet flightAviation

USAF Operation Power Flite — Three B-52s circled the globe in 45 hours 19 minutes with in-flight refuelling.

Water speed record — 239 mphSpeed

Donald Campbell (UK) — Third consecutive year, same boat, same lake.

Best-selling flying discOdd

Frisbee / Wham-O — Launched in 1957; over 300 million sold, and it spawned three separate sports.

19567 records

Only heavyweight champion to retire undefeatedSport

Rocky Marciano (USA) — Walked away in April 1956 at 49 fights, 49 wins, 43 knockouts. No heavyweight since has left with a clean sheet.

First aircraft over 1,000 mphAviation

Peter Twiss (UK) — Flew the Fairey Delta 2 to 1,132 mph over Chichester, smashing the air speed record by a full 300 mph.

Water speed record — 225 mphSpeed

Donald Campbell (UK) — Second Bluebird record in as many years, on Coniston Water.

Only perfect game in World Series historySport

Don Larsen (USA) — 27 batters up, 27 down, for the Yankees against the Dodgers. Seventy years on it has never been repeated.

First man over 60 feet in the shot putAthletics

Parry O'Brien (USA) — His back-to-the-front glide technique reinvented the event and is still the basis of how it's thrown.

First transatlantic telephone cableTech

TAT-1 (UK/Canada/USA) — Carried 36 simultaneous calls. Before it, a call across the Atlantic went by radio and often failed.

Fastest animal on the planetNature

Peregrine falcon — Clocked at 389 km/h in a hunting stoop — faster than any other living thing.

19556 records

The record book itselfOdd

Norris & Ross McWhirter — Commissioned after Guinness MD Sir Hugh Beaver lost a pub argument about Europe's fastest game bird. Britain's No.1 bestseller by Christmas; now the best-selling copyrighted book ever.

Water speed record — 202 mphSpeed

Donald Campbell (UK) — Took Bluebird K7 to 202.32 mph on Ullswater in July 1955, the first of seven water speed records he would set in nine years.

World records at 1500 m, 3000 m and 5000 m in one seasonAthletics

Sándor Iharos (Hungary) — One of the Hungarian distance greats, he rewrote three world records in a single summer.

Tallest structure — Griffin Television TowerEngineering

USA — The guyed TV mast era began, and broadcast towers took the tallest-structure title away from buildings for the next 50 years.

Largest animal that has ever livedNature

Blue whale — Listed in the very first edition at up to 33 m and 190 tonnes — bigger than any dinosaur ever found.

Largest theme park of its eraOdd

Disneyland, California — Opened July 1955 and went on to become the most-visited theme park resort on earth.

Nothing matches that. Try a year, a name, or something like "marathon", "Moon" or "Everest".