Castro in Guinness Book

[snopes]

Comment: I have seen several media outlets reporting on Fidel Castro
entering Guinness Records Book as the person surviving the most
assassination attempts, with 638 attempts from 1959 to 2006, that seems
impossible, and couldn't find anything on Guinness on line; a similar
rumor about Castro being the persong with the longest speech at UN, also
turned nothing on Guinness on line. Is there any truth about these
entries.

[Troberg]

Well, given that Castro has some of the best intelligence organizations in the world against him, I find it unlikely that they would fail that many times.

[Richard W]

I don't have a (post-2006) Guinness Book of Records to look at, but Guinness does verify the records they put in the book, and I can't see how you could verify the number of assassination attempts to set a definite standard figure.

(On the other hand, a lot of records these days seem to be based on the first person to bother to try to set a "record" for something silly, so if Guinness likes the idea they'll get in the book no matter how well they do, because nobody has tried before, or bothered to tell anybody if they did. So perhaps Castro just rang them up to ask if he could be in the book, and since nobody else had claimed a higher number, once they'd checked his number it was automatically top...)

[Mateus]

The Beeb says Castro spoke the longest before a General Assembly (and proclaims it to be in Guinness), and V.K. Krishna Menon the longest at the UN (in front of the Security Council).

Four hours and 29 minutes is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest speech in front of the General Assembly, given in September 1960 by Fidel Castro. The former Cuban leader is known for his interminable speeches - his longest on record in Cuba clocking up seven hours and 10 minutes at the 1986 Communist Party Congress.
Even that was topped, when at the UN Security Council in 1957, the Indian politician VK Krishna Menon talked for nearly eight hours defending India's position on Kashmir. (The transcript is on the UN website and runs to 160 pages.)

ETA: The transcript, for those of you with some free time.

[Right U R Ken]

Originally Posted by snopes

Comment: I have seen several media outlets reporting on Fidel Castro entering Guinness Records Book as the person surviving the most assassination attempts, with 638 attempts from 1959 to 2006, ,.

You would think after the first hundred or so security would get a little tighter.