It's official: California's Death Valley is the hottest place on earth. It's taken 99 years for the recognition, but experts at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced on Thursday that a reading of 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius) at a remote Libyan outpost in 1922 was simply a case of overcooked data. Thus, the WMO now recognizes the 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius) reading on July 10, 1913, at Death Valley's Greenland Ranch (now called, quite fittingly, Furnace Creek) as the highest surface temperature ever recorded.
The record came during a week of extreme heat in Death Valley, where the high reached at least 127 degrees Fahrenheit (52.7 degrees Celsius) every day.
"It was so hot that swallows in full flight fell to the earth dead," Oscar Denton, the ranch caretaker and regional weather observer, reportedly said of the day. "When I went out to read the thermometer with a wet Turkish towel on my head, it was dry before I returned."
We, as a people, love the extremes -- the hottest, coldest, tallest, deepest, largest, smallest, highest, lowest everything. Anything that ends in "est" piques our imagination.
It also serves as a good marketing tool for tourism boards to lure us in. For those that can't help but be attracted to earth's extremes, here's a look at some of the wildest spots on the planet and how easy (or hard) it is to visit them.
UK's David Cameron Makes Surprise Visit to AfghanistanWith permanently frozen ground and temperatures that have reached -96.2 degrees Fahrenheit (-71.2 Celsius), the remote Siberian town of Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth with nearly 500 residents.
Level of difficulty: Hard, but not impossible. You’ll need to fly in to Yakutsk and take a motorcar for the long ride to Oymyakon. At least two tour companies run trips to the village, and when you get there, several families will host visitors.creative commonsCyprus, Weak Pending Home Sales Weigh Down Wall StreetBouvet Island, an uninhabited subantarctic volcanic island and dependency of Norway, is the most remote island on the planet. Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, the closest land is Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, some 1,100 miles (1,770km) to the south.
Level of difficulty for visitors: Hard. Unless you are on a research expedition, you may have trouble reaching this one.
wikicommonsTristan da Cunha, population 275, is the world’s most remote inhabited island. Also in the South Atlantic Ocean, the British Overseas Territory is 1,750 miles (2,816km) from the nearest land, South Africa.
Level of difficulty for visitors: Hard, but not impossible. Some small cruise ships visit the island, and you can apply for permission to set sail on one of the scheduled ships from Cape Town.creative commonsMawsynram, a small village in northeastern India, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the wettest place on the planet, having received 1,024 inches (26,000mm) of rainfall in 1985.
Level of difficulty for visitors: Medium. Though well off the beaten path of India’s traditional tourism circuit, the state of Meghalaya has a budding ecotourism industry, which capitalizes on the area's rich flora and fauna.creative commonsKrubera Cave (sometimes called Voronya Cave) is the deepest known cave on Earth, with a known depth of 7,188 ± 66 feet (2,191 ± 20m).
Level of difficulty for visitors: Hard. Unless you’re a speleologist, you probably won’t find yourself in this cave anytime soon. creative commonsWith a height of 3,212 feet (979m) and a drop of 2,648 feet (807m), Angel Falls is easily the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall.
Level of difficulty for visitors: Medium. While Angel Falls is one of Venezuela’s top tourist attractions, the trip there is rather complicated.
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