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| guinness world records |
| Dubai welcomed 2014 with the World’s Largest Fireworks Display, which was launched from stations across the World, which is the name of the World’s Largest Artificial Archipelago, as well as the nearby Palm Jumeirah. |
These days, Guinness World Records seem to come in record numbers of shapes and sizes. Some seem like publicity-hounding—Most Clothespins Clipped on a Face (159), Largest Group Hug (10,554 people) and so on—while others, such as the one set in 2010 by United Arab Emirates inventor and renewable-energy enthusiast Haidar Taleb Erabeh, carry social weight.
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| courtesy www.masdarcity.ae |
| Seated under the solar-panel canopy of his wheelchair and surrounded by supporters, Haidar Taleb Erabeh holds his certificate presented by Guinness World Records. |
iagnosed with polio at age four, Erabeh, now 51, designed a solar-powered wheelchair that he rode non-stop for 14 hours and 28 seconds from Masdar City north to the Sharjah al-Thiqa Club for the Handicapped, a distance of 141.7 kilometers (88.05 mi). This earned him both a Guinness record and national celebrity status. His eco-friendly wheelchair is powered by four batteries charged by overhead solar panels that also provide shade for Erabeh himself. He says two goals motivated him: innovation in renewable energy and higher awareness of the power of people with disabilities. “Give disabled people a chance and they can perform miracles,” Erabeh said to the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National.
Erabeh’s is one of dozens of Guinness records set over the past few years throughout the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and South Asia, which have become one of the world’s top record-setting regions. According to Talal Omar, who directs the office Guinness opened in 2013 in Dubai, record applications from these regions have ballooned by as much as 300 to 400 percent. “We have only scratched the surface in the region’s talents,” he enthused to Guinness’s own World Records News.
As home to the World’s Tallest Building (Burj Khalifa), Largest Man-made Archipelago (World Islands) and Biggest Shopping Mall (Dubai Mall)—not to mention the Fastest Roller-Coaster—Dubai itself holds more than 100 Guinness records, including one of the world’s most spectacular: World’s Largest Fireworks Display. Mounted over a mere six minutes on New Year’s Eve 2013, it burst 479,651 fireworks—about 80,000 per minute—across both of the emirate’s artificial archipelagos, the World and the Palm Jumeirah. The old record, set in 2012 by Kuwait, was blown away within the first minute. The spectacle was timed by more than 100 computers, and it took more than 10 months to plan at a cost of nearly $6.7 million.
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| almajdouie |
| Setting a record that stood for two years, Almajdouie of Dammam, Saudi Arabia, moved the Heaviest Object Transported by Road—a single-piece, 4.9-million kilogram (10.8 million lb) evaporator for a desalination plant. |
Although Omar calls the fireworks record “iconic” among the more than 300 record attempts he has judged as an official “adjudicator” for Guinness World Records, one stands out, he says. In April 2012, Hebah Alwafi of Jiddah, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, teamed up with the charitable organization Ayoun Jeddah to set a new record for the Largest Donation Of School Supplies in 24 Hours. In that one day, Alwafi and volunteers solicited and collected 4019 kilograms (8860 lb) of school supplies from individuals and wholesale suppliers, all for the benefit of children in need. “It’s really inspiring to see people attempting to set records as well as doing good deeds for society,’’ said Omar to Shiva Kumar Thekkepat of uae-based Friday Magazine.
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| guinness world records |
| Setting a record that lasted only two months, 27,117 Bangladeshis formed their flag by holding colored placards. Both Pakistan and Nepal bested Bangladesh this year. |
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| guinness world records |
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| youtube.com |
| Guinness has honored claims of 32 records by the three-year-old Punjab Youth Festival in Lahore, Pakistan. Top: 1450 participants break the record for the Largest Number of People Simultaneously Arm Wrestling; above: Mohammad Rashid of Karachi kicks 50 coconuts off the heads of four courageous assistants. |
Earlier that year on the east coast of Saudi Arabia, in Dammam, a very different record supported community welfare when Almajdouie Logistics Company moved the Heaviest Object Transported by Road. A single-piece, 4.9 million kilogram (10.8 million lb) evaporator unit for a seawater-desalination plant, which will help make fresh water more abundant for more than 3 million people, arrived on a custom-made ship from Korea, and rolling it two kilometers (1.2 mi) to the plant’s site earned it the record. Yet Almajdouie, like other Guinness record holders, knows well the old adage that “records are made to be broken.” In April this year, Abu Dhabi-based transporter ALE moved an offshore oil platform whose 13,191 tons put Almajdouie in its rearview mirror.
Gigantism endures as one of Guinness’s most popular categories worldwide, especially when connected with edibles. Big-food records appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records early on, and now, to avoid charges that it may encourage food waste, Guinness requires that food submitted for a record be entirely consumed after measurement. This produces events, such as that in July 2012, when 10 chefs at the Landmark Hotel in Amman, Jordan, made the World’s Largest Falafel Ball: 74.75 kilograms (165 lb). It was weighed and then served to 600 people as part of the Ramadan iftar, or evening meal. (Food-record organizers have to be careful, though, to make sure Guinness officials measure the dish before the eating begins: In October 2008 in Tehran, Iran, 1000 cooks whipped up a 1500-meter-long (0.93 mi) ostrich-meat sandwich as a promotion for the lean, low-cholesterol poultry, but the over-eager crowd began gobbling it from the other end before it could be officially measured.)
Outside the Gulf region, one of the top record-producing cities is Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city and site since 2012 of the annual Punjab Youth Festival, which has produced to date 32 individual and group records. Last year, Karachi resident Mohammad Rashid kicked 50 coconuts off the heads of (standing, helmeted) people in one minute, and 1450 young men and women sat across from one another in pairs at long tables to break a 2012 uk-held record for the Number of People Simultaneously Arm Wrestling. The year before, 12-year-old Mehere Gul set a world record for One-Handed Chessboard Setup (45.48 seconds). And not all the participants are young: Sadi Ahmed, a farmer from Faisalabad, set a record by pulling a Hyundai truck weighing 1700 kilograms (3748 lb) over a 63-meter (206') course—with his beard.
Usman Anwar, director of the festival, explained to Michele Langevine Leiby of The Washington Post that young people from 55,200 neighborhood and village councils had been training for eight months for a chance to compete in the games. “Our main objective was to inculcate interest for sports in the public,” Anwar said.
Other records are unabashed appeals to national pride, and at times this sets off rivalries, such as those currently running hot among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for Most People Singing a National Anthem. On August 14, 2011 (Pakistan’s Independence Day), 5885 Pakistani singers set a record that held until January 25, 2012, when 15,243 Indian singers claimed it, only to fall later that year at the first Punjab Youth Festival, where 42,813 Pakistani singers gathered. In May 2013, 121,653 employees of one of India’s largest conglomerates broke the record in a lavish, open-air show in Lucknow, India, only to be bested on March 26 of this year when Bangladeshi singers numbering 254,537 filled the national parade ground in Dhaka and sang for what is, for now, the record.
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| guinness world records |
| Above: During Ramadan 2012, chefs in Amman produced The World’s Largest Falafel, which Guinness certified at 74.75 kilograms (165 lb). |
Similarly, the same countries are vying over World’s Largest Human Flag: Pakistan took this record with 24,200 during the 2012 Punjab Youth Festival, and Bangladesh mustered 27,117 on December 16, 2013, to celebrate its 1971 independence—from Pakistan—which countered two months later with a flag comprised of 28,957 students. But then in August, Nepal entered the contest, fielding 35,000. Who’s next?
Returning to individuals, Haidar Taleb Erabeh did not stop with his record. He used the fame it won him to help publicize an even more demanding, solar-wheelchair-powered trip, though not a record-setting one—320 kilometers (200 mi) across the uae. For 11 days, he visited schools, malls and social clubs in all seven emirates to talk up renewable energy. On December 2, 2010, uae national day, he rolled into Masdar City—which helped sponsor him, and which itself earned a record in 2013 as Most Environmentally Friendly City. It’s a city whose power comes entirely from renewable resources; it recycles all waste and uses driverless electric transport. It also holds a record for a rare, low number: For its projected population of 50,000, it holds the record for Lowest Carbon Footprint: zero. Now that’s one for the record book!
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Gerald Zarr (zarrcj@comcast.net) is a writer, lecturer and development consultant. He lived and worked as a us Foreign Service officer for more than 20 years, and he is the author of Culture Smart! Tunisia: A Quick Guide to Customs and Etiquette (Kuperard, 2009). |
