World's longest running soap opera (72 years)

The world's longest running soap opera, Guiding Light, has been on for 72 years following the lives of four families in America. Starting out as a radio play in 1937 before graduating to CBS daytime TV in 1952, it was funded by Procter & Gamble, which employed Irna Phillips, the "mother of the genre", to write it. In the mid-60s, it was one of the first soaps to feature African-American actors in regular roles. Its fictional "anywhere America" location moved around until 1966, when it settled in a town called Springfield. Kevin Bacon, Calista Flockhart and Mickey Rourke all started out on the show. The show won dozens of awards in its seven-decade span and ran up more than 15,700 episodes, each ending in a cliffhanger.

World's longest blackout (66 days)


In 1998 Auckland had a blackout power crisis for five weeks. Almost all of downtown Auckland in New Zealand was supplied electricity by Mercury Energy via four power cables, two of them 40-year-old oil-filled cables that were past their replacement date. One of the cables failed on January 20, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, another on February 9. Due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, the remaining two failed on February 19 and 20, leaving about 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) without power during 66 days. 7500 businesses and residents were affected. Estimated loss due to the power failure was $156 million USD.

World's longest movie kiss (3min 5sec)


In 1941, a kiss made movie history. Jayne Wyman and Regis Toomey kissed for three minutes and five seconds during the film You're In The Army Now. This actually took up 1/25th of the film's total running time. This comedy film is about two vacuum-cleaner salesmen who are accidentally inducted into the army and the hijinks that follow.