However the Guinness Book of Records was not created so drunk people had something to argue about in pubs.

Came to comment that. It's a very interesting story. We didn't had GPS, so we needed maps. Tire companies would make huge guides with maps and places to stop, an analog GPS, and guides started giving stars to places, like google reviews, aaaaaand them became what it is

Addendum: the food guide costs more to produce than revenue it generates. It's not even a "loss leader" its just a cost center.

Michelin actually does have red guides for restaurants and hotels, and also green guides for cities, regions, and countries.

literally the crystallization of drunk guys goin "Hey y'all, watch this!"

Sure they still aren't up to mischief?

The business model for pubs was often a franchise relationship with the brewery. Your local pub could plausibly be a guinness pub that only served guinness beers at the time the record book was first invented.

I was At the Storehouse in 2006 and they didn't have them then.

King Leopold II got into the colonialism game a bit later than some of the other players, but the people of the Congo gave him a hand in quickly catching up and surpassing the others in being a massive piece of shit.

Normally I don't like explaining jokes, but I think knowing is more important than the shitty joke in this case, but that fucker's regime started a habit of cutting off hands for failing to meet production quotas for rubber in the Congo.

And maybe surpassing is overstating it, since Britain and Spain at least were engaging more in genocide than forced labour of the natives, then they just shipped in African slaves for the labour.

And I'm only leaving France and the Dutch off that list because I'm not familiar with the specifics of how they did colonialism, though I am aware of Haiti, a French colony until the only successful slave revolt that I'm aware of happened there, so that doesn't look very promising for them.

But I like the way they put it, as a travel guide/tire company

1 star: "High-quality cooking, worth a stop"

2 star: "Excellent cooking, worth a detour"

3 star : "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey"

They still have online maps.

I think they have some details that other maps don't show. F.i. the lane directions are pretty detailed.

That's the closest near miss in trademark collisions I can think of, other than when McDonald's moves into some small country, there's been a restaurant called McDees there since the 50's, McDonald's sues and then loses all trademark rights in that nation.

Same with Magnum Ice Cream, and Magnum Condoms.

Yeah idk I'm waiting for the Yokohama star restaurants