Gabe Osterhout, a research associate with the School of Public Service, broke a Guinness World Record on campus by identifying all national flags in four minutes, 51 seconds, setting a new record for “fastest time to identify all national flags.”
Osterhout considers himself an amateur vexillologist – a person who studies flags. But to become the next world champion, he not only needed to identify 197 national flags, he had to master the quick and error-free typing of tricky country names like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Equatorial Guinea and Kyrgyzstan.
His world record was made possible by individual volunteers keeping time, taking photos and serving as independent witnesses.