Two Guys on Exact Opposite Ends of the World Made an Earth Sandwich

From Popular Mechanics

• A guy in New Zealand put a piece of bread on the ground, and at the exact same time, a guy in Spain—on the exact opposite point of Earth—also put a piece of bread on the ground.

• The result was an Earth sandwich.

• None of this would have been possible without Reddit, a strange, wonderful place.

Because it’s important to have goals, a man from New Zealand named Etienne Naude has long searched for someone in southern Spain to just make a damn sandwich with him already. If that sounds like a weirdly specific—but frankly, not that hard?—request, here’s the rub: Naude wanted to make an Earth sandwich, wherein two people plop down two pieces of bread at the precise opposite points of the planet, wrapping our big ol’ rock in carbs.

After several fits and starts, Naude, 19, finally roped in a willing stranger where willing strangers often lurk: Reddit.

“Hi,” Naude posted to the Spain subreddit two months ago. “I live in Auckland, New Zealand. I am wanting to make a thing called an Earth sandwich …. I was wondering if there was anyone who lived around Olvera, Villamartin, or Sevilla who wanted to be part of this and make the other half of the sandwich?”

Naude soon found his sandwich—nay, soul—mate in Angel Sierra, a 34-year-old chef selected more for his location than his presumably superior culinary skills. “It can help to show how people can work together across the globe,” Sierra told the BBC, when asked why he volunteered to participate. “I felt that I was making something bigger than me,” as in a sandwich the size of 5.97 x 10²⁴ kg, the mass of Earth.

To pull off the stunt, the new pals used this map tunneling tool, which tells you which part of the other side of Earth is directly below you. Naude inputted his latitude and longitude coordinates in Auckland and found his location’s exact “antipode,” the name for the point opposite another point on Earth’s surface, in Málaga, Spain. (Sadly, if you try the tool from most places in the U.S., you won’t find an antipode on land. Damn oceans.)

From there, it was just a matter of clearing a few last hurdles, namely accounting for the 12-hour time difference between New Zealand and Spain, nailing down the exact locations—Naude only had to travel several hundred feet to find his spot, the BBC says, while Sierra made a 6.8-mile trek—and, of course, using the same bread. That’s sandwich rule #1, after all.

“You’d expect supermarkets around the world to have the exact same kind [of bread],” Naude told The World. “Apparently not.” (The bread buds evidently squared it away. While we haven’t been able to track down the exact specifics of what kind of bread they used, rest assured we’ll update this post as soon as we do.)

And then, sandwich magic. To commemorate the occasion, both heroes snapped photos of their triumphant simultaneous achievement—despite one anonymous Redditor saying that, well, actually, they were one foot off the mark—which you can see in the main photo above. No word yet on how Earth tasted, or if either man used a little light mayo on his slice.

Of course, this isn’t the world’s first, well, sandwich with the world in it. The idea is widely credited to American artist Ze Frank, who in 2006 successfully tried the trick in Spain as a buddy completed the snack in New Zealand. Frank and his friend used baguettes, because they were fancy.

So while we’ve finally answered the age-old question, “Is Earth a sandwich?” all that’s left to do is crack the classic quandary that’s even more pressing: How ‘bout a hot dog?

You Might Also Like

• This Device Can Send Messages Without Cell Service

• The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere

• The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born