El Paso is known for a lot of things! The Franklin Mountains, the food, and our border culture that makes this city unlike anywhere else in the country. But did you know the Sun City is also quietly sitting on a collection of Guinness World Records? From a pecan pie the size of a small house to a 12-year-old who out-produced everyone on earth, here are some of El Paso’s most surprising record-breaking moments.
El Paso Baked a Pecan Pie That Weighed More Than 41,000 Pounds
On May 22, 1999, the El Paso Diablos Baseball Club did something nobody has matched since. At Cohen Stadium, the team baked a pecan pie weighing 18.863 tonnes, over 41,586 pounds, stretching 50 feet in diameter. To put that in perspective, the filling alone required 13,350 pounds of sugar, 6,700 pounds of eggs, and 9,700 pounds of corn syrup. The pie stands as one of the most delightfully absurd things ever done at a minor league baseball game, which is really saying something.
Over 40,000 People Did the YMCA at the Sun Bowl With the Village People There in Person
On December 31, 2008, 40,148 participants gathered at the Sun Bowl and danced the YMCA simultaneously for 5 minutes and 34 seconds, sung live by the Village People themselves. The previous record had been set when 13,588 fans did it at a Salt Lake Stingers minor league baseball game in Nebraska. El Paso nearly tripled it. The certification process took months, requiring hundreds of photos of every section of the Sun Bowl plus footage from 12 cameras covering every angle of the stadium. NYC tried to break it on New Year’s Eve 2019. They didn’t.
An El Paso Cheerleader Did 53 Consecutive Handsprings on Live Television
On September 21, 2013, JaLyssa Walker achieved the Guinness World Record for most consecutive handsprings by a female, 53 in a row without stopping, filmed on the set of the TV show “Officially Amazing” at the Sun Bowl. Walker was a UTEP cheerleader at the time. That record has since gone viral on social media multiple times, racking up millions of views on Guinness’s own channels.
An El Paso Family Built a 28-Foot Lamb Kebab in Their Spare Time
On June 1, 2011, Leon Ekery and his family built a lamb kebab measuring 28 feet and 7 inches, setting the world record for the longest kebab skewer while representing El Paso, Texas. Ekery is the owner of Dyer Auto Salvage yard. There is no video of the event, but Guinness certified it. Only in El Paso does the guy who owns an auto salvage yard also hold a lamb kebab world record.
A 12-Year-Old El Pasoan Became the World’s Youngest Professional Music Producer
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