That Time Tina Turner Set a Guinness World Record

Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, is a huge football venue erected for the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Its capacity is listed at 78,838, but that means stadium seats for sporting events. When the stadium is used for other purposes, like a concert, it can hold more than twice as many people.

In the 1980s, Tina Turner was riding a wave of fame she never expected in the previous three decades of her career. During her Break Every Rule tour, she played Maracanã Stadium January 16, 1988, to a crowd of more than 188,000 ticket holders, which landed her in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most tickets sold for a concert by a solo artist. Other sources put the number at 180,000, but that's still an awful lot of people. The record held until 1990, when Paul McCartney played the same stadium.

Read about that memorable concert by Tina Turner, and see a video of her performance at Mental Floss. 


More Neat Posts

Loading...