Hannah had to do a bit of searching to find a world record she thought she could beat. After much looking, she found that a record was only five hours away.–World Records Editor Jake Sonderman
By Hannah Hall
As I was cruising the Guinness World Records, a specific record caught my attention: Highest Dinner Party. The record itself is a dinner party of ten hosted on April 30th, 2018, on Mt. Everest in China. The dinner’s altitude was roughly 23,149 ft high! I thought this record was pretty difficult to beat, but it did open me up to the idea of something similar. I believe that I can hold the world record for the world’s lowest dinner party. There are a few ways that this could go down—pun intended.
As I was pitching this proposition to the Blog team, Erik mentioned the Mariana Trench. I thought maybe I could take a submarine and trek down to the bottom of it and have a dinner party there. But, the thing is, I feel like this record is supposed to be on some sort of land mass. The reason I am led to believe this is because, otherwise, the “highest dinner party” could occur on a plane. Don’t those things fly at like 40k feet high?? So, this thought in itself made me back out of the deep-sea feast.
As I was continuing to research the lowest places on Earth, I came across many land-based locations that were below sea level. I saw that I could go eat in Africa at the Qattara Depression which sits at 482 ft below sea level. This would require me to get on a plane all the way to Africa though, and that’s a lot of time spent, allowing, possibly, somebody else to break the record before me. Other problems include it only being the second lowest place in Africa and the fact it is unclear whether this point is below water or on land. So, I kept searching.
I then thought, I could just smack the record right in the face and go straight to the actual lowest place on Earth, the Dead Sea, located beside Jordan and Israel. The Dead Sea’s shore is roughly 1400 ft below sea level. And, a fact about the Dead Sea is that its water is receding at one meter per year, which is sad, but it just means more room for my dinner party. But, yet again, I am faced with the same plane-time dilemma. Again, the search went on; luckily, the perfect option appeared to me soon after.
I thought I could have the dinner party in our home state of California in Death Valley. Death Valley is actually the lowest point in America and has a depth of 282 ft below sea level. Interestingly enough, if I have a dinner party here, I would be beating two records: Lowest Dinner Party, and Lowest Dinner Party in America (and maybe Hottest Dinner Party). That in itself intrigues me. The ride over to Death Valley is roughly five hours. I think I could make it happen.
I hope that one day this record will be broken, whether or not it is by me. It is something cool to have in the books! At least, I will always know, I had the idea first.
World Records Editor: Jake Sonderman
Sources:
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/highest-dinner-party
https://www.deadsea.com/articles-tips/places-below-sea-level-worlds-lowest-elevation-points/
https://earth.esa.int/web/earth-watching/image-of-the-week/content/-/article/the-dead-sea