Want your name to go down in history? The Guinness Book of Records will ensure that. It has achievements for every taste, color and size.
We have already written about the new world records of 2020, included in the Guinness Book of Records. And in this article we will talk about money. Or rather, about the most expensive and cheapest achievements from the Guinness Book of Records. Perhaps, after reading them, you will remember more expensive or cheaper things that have not yet come to the attention of the Book's experts.
Cheapest records
5. The cheapest supercomputer-decoder
In 2011, the American company Pico Computing released a mini-supercomputer for cracking codes, the price of which is only 400 dollars. It has the size of a regular desktop, but at the same time has all the power of a supercomputer and is intended for military and government tasks, like other developments of Pico Computing.
The company's computers are based on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It can be configured after production, but you can't do that with C or Java. The FPGA has to be programmed at the level of the logic gates that signal it to turn on or off.
Despite such difficulties, Pico Computing products are in demand “in narrow circles”, because computers with FPGA matrix can be programmed for a specific computing task, which they will cope with much faster than solutions from Intel and AMD.
4. The cheapest car of all time
When the AO Smith Company of Milwaukee, USA, decided to get into the automobile business, it didn't set out to build the cheapest car in the history of the world. But that's exactly what it ended up doing.
The car, initially called the Smith Flyer and later the Briggs & Stratton Flyer (the rights to produce it were transferred to the Briggs & Stratton company) cost between $125 and $150.
For this price you got a vehicle without a body, muffler, shock absorbers, with a maximum speed of about 18 km per hour, and with little hope for the driver's survival in the event of an accident. But the driver had the following at his disposal:
- wooden base-bench,
- hard seat,
- 4 wheels,
- 2 hp engine located on the fifth wheel.
And all this magnificence was offered and bought from 1915 to 1925. Then Briggs and Stratton sold the rights to the "flying bench", as this machine was affectionately called, to another manufacturer, who eventually attached an electric motor to it, powering the wheels. Then the Flyer's tracks are lost, apparently it did not gain popularity.
3. The cheapest mobile home
The experts of the Guinness Book of Records did not give the exact cost of this Chinese miracle, presented at the Get It Louder exhibition in 2013. However, it is the cheapest mobile home in the world. Which is a small three-wheeled accordion-like structure based on a bicycle.
The material used to create the mobile home called Off-Grid was polypropylene.
This tiny structure contains a kitchen with a sink, a water tank, a convertible bed, and even an attachable garden cart.
If necessary, several tricycle houses can be connected to each other to create additional space.
2. The cheapest hotel
Do you think this hotel is located in a third world country? No, it is built in prosperous London and is part of the budget hotel chain Tune Hotels. You can rent a room there for 9 pounds sterling per night.
Moreover, for this amount the guest will receive not only a bed, but also a separate bathroom, shower, air conditioning and even a desk. And for an additional fee you can get a TV, room cleaning, a safe and a hairdryer.
1. The cheapest smartphone with Android OS
If we asked you what smartphone is best to buy if your budget is limited to $35, we would most likely receive a variety of answers. But the Guinness Book of Records has its own opinion on this matter. And it sounds like Jivi JSP 20. The price of the cheapest smartphone with Android is $32. It was announced in 2014.
The phone features a 3.5-inch screen with a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels, a single-core 1 Ghz processor, 128 MB of RAM and a rear 2 MP camera.
At the time of the announcement, the 20 JSP firmware was an ancient Android version 2.3.5 Gingerbread. Perhaps the manufacturer released updates, although given the budget nature of this model, there are doubts that its relevance was kept afloat.
The most expensive records
5. The most expensive comic book in the world
In August 2014, Action Comics # 1, the first issue of the American comic book series about the adventures of Superman, was sold at an eBay auction. This series was started in 1938 by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, and since then the comic has been published until 2011.
The price of one of the copies of the first edition was $3,207,852. Well, its new owner may not have the power of Superman, but he certainly has the power of money.
4. The most expensive species of animal kept in a zoo
The pride of China, the giant panda (Ailuropoda Melanoleuca), although exported outside the Celestial Empire, is not for free. Four zoos in the American cities of San Diego, Atlanta, Washington and Memphis pay the Chinese government $1 million each year for the right to keep a pair of these rare creatures.
If the pandas do produce offspring, it will cost the zoo $600,000.
It is interesting that zoos in Australia and Thailand pay less for the right to own giant pandas than Americans ($300,000). Why? Because America, in the opinion of the Chinese government, is a rich country, and therefore can afford to pay more for Chinese animals.
3. The most expensive card in the world
Nowadays, you can create and track your route using a smartphone app or a GPS. But there was a time when people had to rely solely on hand-made maps. And some of them only grew in value over time.
The most expensive map with the long title Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioru[m]que Lustrationes ("Map of the world constructed according to the method of Ptolemy and supplemented by new lands from Amerigo Vespucci") was created in 1507.
Its author, cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, was one of the first to put precise latitude and longitude readings on a map, and was also the first to use the name "America". The southern part of the New World was named after the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci. The cartographer used the Latin version of the Florentine's name.
Interestingly, while the main map shows North and South America as two distinct landmasses separated by a narrow strait, there is a small map inset at the top edge that shows the isthmus connecting them.
Only one copy of the map has survived to this day. Its value is 10 million dollars. Waldseemüller's creation is currently kept in the US Library of Congress.
2. The most expensive milkshake
In Russia, you can buy an inexpensive milkshake for 95 rubles. But those who value the desire to impress others more than money can (after the coronavirus epidemic) go to New York and buy the most expensive milkshake in the world, LUXE.
It costs $100 and the recipe includes a variety of ingredients, including:
- edible 23-karat gold, which gives the finished dish a pleasant shine;
- Vanilla ice cream made with premium Tahitian beans;
- donkey caramel sauce, yes, you read that right, it's a sauce that contains donkey milk;
- Madagascar vanilla beans;
- Jersey milk is tasty and very fatty.
And a number of other components, each of which increases the cost of the LUXE cocktail. Would you like to try it?
1. The most expensive covert operation
Or rather, it is the most expensive operation ever declassified, because we will not know for a long time how much modern special operations cost. So, we are talking about Operation Cyclone, a program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency to arm and train Islamist insurgent groups (known as "mujahideen") to fight the USSR in Afghanistan.
Between 1979 and 1989, the CIA spent more than $1.4 billion to purchase weapons, supplies, and train the mujahideen.
Operation Cyclone was the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser. He believed that the Soviet Union or its proxies could be drawn into a protracted and pointless counterinsurgency campaign (Brzezinski called it "their Vietnam").
The long-term effects of the program were debatable. Cyclone certainly played a role in weakening the Soviet Union and may have hastened its collapse. However, the lack of control over the distribution of weapons and military aid led to the rise of the mujahideen, who later turned their weapons against their benefactors. They produced notorious terrorists such as Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden.
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