Death Valley is flirting with a world record high here. The current record, 134 degrees, was set at the aptly named Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley almost exactly 100 years ago, July 10, 1913. (Higher records claimed in Libya in the 20s are no longer accepted as accurate.)
The list of national and regional records is fascinating. Only a few countries or large regions have never experienced freezing temperatures or temperatures above 100. The extremes for Puerto Rico are 40 and 99.4 degrees, for example, giving it a range of just 59 degrees over the past couple of hundred years. It has been over 100 degrees in such places as Sweden and Switzerland, but never in tropical Puerto Rico.