Guinness World Record For Curtsying Set In New York City

A crowd at New York City's London Hotel practiced some extreme etiquette Thursday night, setting the Guinness World Record for curtsying by completing 314 curtsies in five minutes.

"I think Londoners will be absolutely delighted," Gordon Innes, CEO of the public relations firm London & Partners, told The Huffington Post. "[It's] our second world record."

The firm is aiming to set 20 world records in time for the summer Olympic Games, which will be held in London in July.

Last week, it helped set the record for the world's longest marathon hug, a sweaty 24-hour, 44-minute embrace that took place at an English train station.

For the record set Thursday, William Hanson, one of Britain's leading etiquette experts, instructed dozens of Londoners, Guinness fans and a few Huffington Post staffers, who dipped and nodded their way into the history books while throwing back champagne and cocktails at a hotel bar.

It's "not a great big swoop like you'd see in a Broadway show," Hanson told the participants, but instead a slight dip and nod of the head.

Part of The Huffington Post's Weird News team -- Associate Editor Andy Campbell and Editor Buck Wolf -- were considered ringers at the event, each adding upwards of three, even four curtsies to the world record total.

The firm will next attempt to break records for the world's most expensive edible Easter egg and the world's longest photograph.

A dapper Hanson, who posted a video blog about the event, said he was impressed.

"We achieved in five minutes [314] absolutely perfect and correct curtsies," he said. "I'm elated. It's not something you do every day and I'm very proud to be a part of such an exclusive club of world records. My ego will have gone through the roof right now."