In January 1964, 17-year-old Randy Gardner of San Diego decided to break the world record by conducting a science experiment for a school fair.
Its goal is to find out how long a person can live without sleep.
Under the supervision of Stanford University scientists and classmates, he lasted 264 hours (11 days).
To stay in shape, Gardner spent all this time playing basketball, going for walks, and even giving interviews.
But already on the second day he began to have mood swings, and on the third day he began to hallucinate (he thought he was an NFL player).
By the end of the experiment, he could barely speak, mixed up words, and failed simple tests with errors.
After setting the record, Gardner slept for 14 hours and took weeks to recover. Surprisingly, he suffered no long-term health effects – a rare case of “luck”.
Gardner's record was included in the Guinness Book of Records, but in the 1990s the category "Longest Stay Awake" was removed. The reason was too high a risk to life.
Randy Gardner remains in history as an example of human endurance, but also as a warning.
Modern science has proven that sleep is the basis of physical and mental health. The best record you can set is 7-9 hours of quality sleep every night.
“Sleep is the one supplement that works for everyone,” says Matthew Walker , neuroscientist and author of Why We Sleep.
P.S. Did you know that Albert Einstein slept 10 hours a day? Maybe this is the secret of his genius?
