Costa Rica is “officially amazing” according to Guinness World Records™. And Inés Sánchez de Revuelta tops with two: that of the longest educational program in history (worldwide) and that of the host of the longest running TV educational show TeleClub (Costa Rica) first broadcast on February 8, 1963.
TeleClub is a unique educational program that promotes family values and the prevention of drugs and violence.
The program is aimed at a female audience, more precisely at housewives. TeleClub started on Channel 4, then moved three channels up: to Teletica Channel 7, then went to Repretel Channel 6, then to Channel 2 and until 2002 its home was Channel 4, then moving to Channel 13 until 2015 it is currently broadcast on Teletica Channel 33.
Sanchez, 87 (born in La Habana, Cuba, June 11, 1931) and a nationalized Costa Rican, has never been off TV for more than 3.5 months, according to Guinness World Records™.
But, Sanchez, who year after year beats his own record (the show turns 59 this year), is not the only Guinness World Records™ record holder in our country.
At the moment there are eight Guinness World Records™ of Costa Rica or of Costa Ricans that are valid in the world list.
The most recent was the dairy company Lala. They managed to serve 5,926 glasses of milk in one hour during an activity that took place on January 27 in the La Sabana Park in San Jose.
On December 7, the Ecolones program, designed and led by Próxima Comunicación, managed to collect 30,162 kg (66,495.83 lb) of plastic bottles in a span of eight hours to break the record that had been established in India. The plastic collection was carried out in the Pedregal facilities, in Belén. More than 28 companies donated plastic bottles during the record attempt.
To achieve both recognitions, the two companies had to carry out a whole logistics program prior to the achievement of the records. In the case of Ecolones, the organization collected the evidence (weights, forms, photographs, videos) and sent it to the authorities of the Guinness World Records™ to be validated. On Monday of last week, they received the good news that they had won the record.
In La Sabana, an official representative of the Guinness World Records™ made the respective reviews to certify the Lala.
Other Guinness World Records™ achieved in Costa Rica include the largest car logo formed by 1,600 Toyota cars and achieved by Purdy Motor S.A. (Costa Rica), at the parking lot of the Centro de Eventos Pedregal, in Heredia, Costa Rica, on October 1, 2017.
Purdy Motor S.A. decided to attempt this record in order to celebrate their 60th anniversary. Most of the participants were owners of Toyota cars, who arrived on the record attempt area in the morning of that Saturday.
The car logo was completed after 9 hours of work, in an area of 31,888.56 m² (343,245.6 ft²).
“We wanted to carry out an activity where ‘toyoteros’ will participate, those who have been so loyal to the brand for so many years. It was crazy, we had to wait for Pedregal to remove the grandstand to make the logo because we could not find adequate space and with the right infrastructure to do it,” recalled Maria Elena Molina, marketing manager of Purdy Motor.
In 1998, Costa Rican musician Geovanny Escalante blew a note uninterrupted on his saxophone for one hour, 45 minutes and 30 seconds; it surpassed well the 45 minutes by Kenny G. Although it is not an official record of Guinness because there is no category for it, Geovanny’s was a note that resonated outside of our borders.
If we talk about Guinness curiosities, in our country we managed to cook the largest fried rice in the world, in 2013. It was made to celebrate the arrival of the Chinese New Year, the plate weighed a total of 1,345 kilograms (the previous record to this era of 500 kilos).
This time, the record was confirmed by a representative of the international organization who arrived in Chinatown in San Jose to attest to the record that was imposed thanks to the collaboration of the Municipality of San José and Asociación Colonia China in Costa Rica
They had the support of 50 chefs who mixed the ingredients in a 2.5-meter pot, out of which 7,000 servings were produced. The title of the largest fried rice in the world was taken from Costa Rica by Turkey in 2014, where one was prepared that weighed 3,150 kilos.
“The biggest ancient stone balls“, the title registered in the Guinness World Records™ for the Diquis stones.
There are more than 1,000 perfectly spherical granitic globes scattered over the Diquis Delta of Costa Rica. Known locally as “Las Bolas Grandes” (The Giant Balls). They were carved from naturally spherical masses of granite by an as-yet-unidentified rave of pre-Columbian people. The largest reach 2.5 meters (8 ft 2 in) in diameter and weighs more than 16 tonnes (35,270 lb).
Last but not least, in Costa Rica, there is the worm most heat-tolerant on Earth and that is also recognized by Guinness World Records™.
It is the Pompeii worm (Alvinella pompejana) that lives in on deep-sea hydrothermal ventsdepths of the Pacific Ocean and can withstand temperatures as high as 80° Celsius (176 Fahrenheit).
Awesome, right?
Well, that’s how Costa Rica is officially awesome, thanks to its historical and curious brands in the Guinness World Records™.
