Photo: Getty Images
After nearly 25 years of growth, a Minnesota woman has broken the world record for longest fingernails.
63-year-old Diana Armstrong has earned the Guinness World Records for “longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female)” and the “longest fingernails on a pair of hands ever (female).”
Fingernails on both of Armstrong's hands have a combined length of 42 feet, 10.4 inches.
Her right thumb alone stacks up to 4 feet, 6.7 inches making it the longest of all of her nails.
Armstrong last used a nail clipper in 1997.
She vowed to never cut her nails again after the death of her 16-year-old daughter Latisha, who always manicured her mother's nails for her.
“When I started growing them, it wasn’t to be in the Guinness Book of World Records,” Armstrong said in a statement. “Now since I am, I tell people, ‘You shouldn’t judge people because you don’t know what people have gone through.’"
The 63-year-old has adjusted to her long nails by learning to use her toes to pick up items off the ground.
“If I have to pick up money off the floor, I can pick up bills,” she said. “But if I drop change on the floor, that will just stay down there!”
Armstrong said she visits the nail salon every four to five years for a manicure, but it takes 15 to 20 bottles of nail polish and a woodworking tool to get the job done.
The Minnesota woman said she sometimes recruits her granddaughters to help paint her fingernails.
“I think she [Latisha] would be proud of me because she’s the last one who did my nails,” Armstrong said. “That’s who I think of when I grow my nails, is my daughter.”
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