On April 17th, 1979, Erez and I set a new world record by toppling a chain of 135,215 dominoes in Wilmette Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago.

Our 1 goal was to break Bob Speca’s world record, but our hope was that doing so would provide us the opportunity to go for another record in the future. We knew turning that hope into reality required getting as much publicity as possible. Our plan was to mail press releases to various TV stations announcing our world record attempt, so back then, finding those addresses required looking them up in a phone book. We had to use the only search-engine available in 1979: The Chicago Public Library’s massive collection of phone books for every major city in America.

Erez spent a Saturday there going through the hundreds of phone books they had. The advertising slogan for the yellow pages was Let Your Fingers Do The Walking and that day Erez’s fingers walked through countless yellow pages as he wrote down addresses for the local ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliate TV stations in the biggest cities across all 50 states. Then we used that list to mail out over 200 press releases a month before the topple, followed by another 200 reminder letters a few weeks later.

When topple day finally arrived, EVERYBODY showed up. Local film crews came from all the Chicago TV stations, as well as national crews from NBC and CBS. There were reporters and photographers from both of Chicago’s major newspapers, various suburban newspapers, and even news wire services AP and UPI.

News of our world record went all over the U.S. and around the globe, making it the 1979 equivalent of ‘going viral’. Erez and I couldn’t have been happier, but the story that aired that night on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite provided the perfect ending to the day. Here’s that story and watch for Mr. Cronkite’s reaction at the end.

– Erez and John