A man from the US, Randy Gardner, stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) back in 1963. He was just 17 years old at the time and did it as part of a challenge with two of his friends. They wanted to break the world record for staying awake, which was then 260 hours, held by a DJ in Honolulu.

The three friends took part in the 10th Annual Greater San Diego Science Fair. Randy agreed to the challenge, even though later he said, “I don’t know why I agreed to talk,” in a video shared by Guinness World Records.
His friends, Bruce McAllister and Joe Marciano Jr. helped keep him awake. They also gave him a set of 20 tests every six hours to check his mental and physical health during the experiment. The experience had a big impact on Randy, showing how hard it is for the body and brain to go without sleep for so long.

After staying awake for three days, Randy Gardner began to struggle. He had trouble focusing and started to forget things quickly.“By the fourth or fifth day, I thought, are you kidding me? This is hard,” he said. But by then, the news had already spread, and he felt it was too late to quit. As the experiment became famous, a well-known sleep researcher from Stanford University, William Dement, joined Randy and his friends for the final three days. Dement, who later became known as the “father of sleep science,” closely observed Randy’s health and mental state.

To help him stay awake, Dement took Randy for car rides with loud music and played pinball games with him. Surprisingly, even after being awake for 10 days, Randy still managed to win a game of pinball. By the end of the 11-day experiment, Randy Gardner faced serious effects from staying awake for so long. He became moody, had trouble concentrating, forgot things easily, and even experienced paranoia and hallucinations. After setting the record, he finally slept for nearly 15 hours while doctors monitored his brain activity, heart rate, and other health signs.

 Although he managed to return to a normal sleep routine at first, Randy later struggled with severe insomnia for many years and believed it was caused by the experiment. Since then, others have tried to break the record, but in 1997, Guinness World Records stopped accepting sleep-deprivation attempts due to safety concerns.