Today in 2019, a runner in the London Marathon set a world record, though it wasn’t recognized as such right away.
Jessica Anderson was looking to break the world record for (and this is an actual category) fastest marathon run in a nurse’s uniform.
She wore her blue nurses scrubs in the race, and her marathon time was three hours, eight minutes, 22 seconds.
She was a full 32 seconds faster than the previous record for the category – and raised thousands of pounds for charity while she was at it, too.
So you’d think she’d be named the world record holder, right?
Well, at first the official judges said she hadn’t broken the record, not because her time wasn’t good enough, but because her outfit wasn’t.
She said she’d been told that, for the purposes of the record, a nurse’s uniform was the traditional one: a white or blues dress, the white hat, the apron.
Anderson pushed back, saying that she was an actual nurse who wore her work clothes in the marathon, which makes that outfit a nurse’s uniform.
And Guinness issued a statement that said “it has become quite clear to Guinness World Records that our guidelines for the fastest marathon wearing a nurse’s uniform were outdated.”
It’s usually wise to listen to nurses, is the lesson here.
And nobody who’s ever seen a nurse at work should be surprised that they can be fast.
Here’s a way to help out a lost dog in record time.
It’s called NoseID, and it works like facial recognition software for people.
You scan the dog’s one-of-a-kind nose print into the system, and if the dog gets away from you, someone else can scan the nose to figure out who it is and get it back to you.
Woman Denied ‘Fastest Nurse’ Record Because She Didn’t Wear a Dress, Later Awarded Title (Sports Illustrated)
NoseID can scan your dog’s unique nose print to help find them if they get lost (It’s Nice That)
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Photo: 26.2 Miles Sticker by Marco Verch under Creative Commons 2.0