We previously wrote about the case of Randy Gardner and his attempt at breaking the world record for longest time without sleep, at the time, which was held by a Honolulu DJ who hadn't slept for 260 hours straight. This year marks the 60th anniversary of Gardner's record.
Years ago, he revealed something interesting after achieving all that. In 2017, he shared with NPR how he developed insomnia as an adult ten years before. It hasn't been confirmed whether he still suffers from it today, but he did quip that it must have been some kind of "karmic payback" for what he put himself through 60 years prior.
For all it's worth, Gardner did think about quitting midway through or, at least, he hinted at it in the video above, but since he and his friends had already garnered so much attention from media, he just resolved to power through the whole experiment and broke the record with 264 hours of no sleep.
Furthermore, the record was actually broken in the same year that Gardner achieved his, but Gardner's experiment has been the most well-documented case of it. The last time that a Guinness world record was awarded for sleep deprivation was in 1986, and afterward, in 1997, the GWR stopped as it posed a risk on those who attempted to break the record.
(Video credit: Guinness World Records/Youtube)