Do you want your name to go down in history? The Guinness Book of Records will provide this. It has achievements for every taste, color and size.
We already wrote about the new world records of 2020, included in the Guinness Book of Records. And in this article we will talk about money. More precisely, about the most expensive and cheapest achievements from the Guinness Book of Records. Perhaps, having familiarized yourself with them, you will recall things that are more expensive or cheaper, which have not yet come under the attention of Book experts.
Cheapest Guinness World 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. It has the dimensions of a regular desktop, but at the same time it has the full power of a supercomputer and is designed for military and government tasks, like other Pico Computing developments.
The computers of this company are based on a user-programmable gate array (PPVM), also known as FPGA. It can be configured after manufacturing, but you won’t be able to do this using C or Java. Programming PPVM is necessary at the level of logic gates, giving a signal of inclusion or switching off.
Despite such difficulties, Pico Computing products are in demand "in narrow circles", because computers with a PCR matrix can be programmed for a specific computing task, which they can cope much faster than solutions from Intel and AMD.
4. The cheapest car of all time
When is A.O. Smith Company from Milwaukee, USA, decided to get into the car business, it did not seek to build the cheapest car in the history of the world. But this is exactly what she did in the end.
The car, originally named Smith Flyer, and later became the Briggs & Stratton Flyer (the rights to release it went to Briggs & Stratton) cost from 125 to 150 dollars.
For this price, you received transport without a body, a silencer, shock absorbers, with a maximum speed of about 18 km per hour, and with little hope for the survival of the driver in the event of an accident. But the services of a motorist were:
- wooden base bench
- hard seat
- 4 wheels
- 2 hp engine located on the fifth wheel.
And all this splendor was offered and bought from 1915 to 1925. Then Briggs and Stratton sold the rights to the “flying bench,” as the car was affectionately called, to another manufacturer, who eventually gave her an electric motor that feeds the wheels. Then the traces of Flyer are lost, apparently he did not gain popularity.
3. Cheapest motor home
Guinness World Records experts have not cited the exact price of this Chinese miracle presented at Get It Louder in 2013. However, it is it that is the cheapest mobile home in the world. Which is a small three-wheeled accordion structure based on a bicycle.
The material for creating a 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 attached garden cart.
If necessary, several tricycle houses can be connected to each other to get additional space.
2. The cheapest hotel
Do you think this hotel is located in one of the third world countries? And here it is, it was built in prosperous London, and is part of the Thune Hotels budget hotel chain. You can rent a room for 9 pounds a day.
Moreover, for this amount the guest will receive not only a berth, but also a separate bathroom, shower, air conditioning and even a desk. And for an additional fee you can get a TV, housekeeping, safe and hairdryer.
1. The cheapest Android smartphone
If we asked you which smartphone is best to buy, if the budget is limited to 35 dollars, then we most likely received a variety of answers. But the Guinness Book of Records has its own opinion on this matter. And it sounds like a Jivi JSP 20. The price of the cheapest Android smartphone is $ 32. It was announced in 2014.
The phone is equipped with 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, firmware 20 JSP was an ancient Android in version 2.3.5 of Gingerbread. Perhaps the manufacturer released updates, although given the budget of this model, there are doubts that its relevance was maintained “afloat”.
The most expensive Guinness World Records
5. The most expensive comic book in the world.
In August 2014, Action Comics # 1, the first issue of Superman’s American adventure comic book series, was sold at an eBay auction. The beginning of this series was laid in 1938 by Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel, since then the comic was released until 2011.
The price of one of the copies of the first edition amounted to 3 207 852 dollars. Well, perhaps its new owner and can not boast of Superman's power, but he certainly has the power of money.
4. The most expensive kind of animals kept in the zoo
The pride of China, the giant panda (Ailuropoda Melanoleuca), although exported outside the Middle Kingdom, is by no means for nothing. Four zoos in the US cities of San Diego, Atlanta, Washington and Memphis annually pay the Chinese government $ 1 million each for the right to keep a couple of these rare creatures.
If the pandas bring offspring, then it costs the zoo $ 600,000.
Interestingly, zoos in Australia and Thailand pay less than Americans ($ 300,000) to own giant pandas. Why? Because America, according to the Chinese government, is a rich country, which means it can afford to pay more for Chinese animals.
3. The most expensive card in the world
Now you can make a route and track it using the application for a smartphone or navigator. But there were times when people had to rely solely on man-made cards. And the value of some of them only grew over time.
The most expensive map with the long name Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioru [m] que Lustrationes ("A world map constructed according to the Ptolemy method and supplemented with new lands from Amerigo Vespucci") was created in 1507.
Its author, the cartographer Martin Waldsemueller, was one of the first to plot exact indications of latitude and longitude, and also for the first time applied the name "America". The southern part of the New World was named after the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci. In this case, the cartographer used the Latin version of the name of the Florentine.
Interestingly, while the main map shows North and South America as two different parts of the land, separated by a narrow strait, there is a small map insert at the top edge that shows the isthmus connecting them.
Only one of the copies of the map has survived to this day. Its cost is 10 million dollars. Now the creation of Waldsemueller is stored in the library of the US Congress.
2. The most expensive milkshake
In Russia, an inexpensive milkshake can be bought for 95 rubles. But those who want to impress others with more money can (after the coronavirus epidemic) go to New York and buy the world's most expensive LUXE milkshake.
Its price is $ 100, and the recipe includes many ingredients, including:
- edible 23-carat gold, which gives the finished dish a pleasant shine;
- vanilla ice cream made from premium Tahitian beans;
- donkey-caramel sauce, yes, you read it right, this is a sauce that contains donkey milk;
- Madagascar Vanilla Beans;
- Jersey milk is delicious and very oily.
And a number of other components, each of which increases the cost of a LUXE cocktail. Would you like to try it?
1. The most expensive covert operation
Or, rather, this is the most expensive declassified operation, because we still won’t find out how much modern special operations cost. So, we are talking about Operation Cyclone, the program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency for arming and training Islamist insurgent groups (known as Mujahideen) to fight the USSR in Afghanistan.
In the period from 1979 to 1989, the CIA allocated over $ 2 billion to purchase weapons, logistics and training for the mujahideen.
Operation Cyclone was the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. He believed that the USSR or its proxies could be drawn into a protracted and meaningless anti-rebel company (Brzezinski called it "their Vietnam").
The long-term effects of this program have been controversial. The Cyclone certainly played a role in weakening the Soviet Union and perhaps accelerated its collapse. However, the lack of control over the distribution of weapons and military assistance led to the strengthening of the Mujahideen, who later turned weapons against their benefactors. Notorious terrorists emerged from their midst, such as Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden.
