Woman Cuts Short Try for Fingernail Record

DALLAS — It took a doctor and a manicurist just 20 minutes to end Lauretta Adams’ dream of setting a world record.

The 43-year-old woman said she had been growing her fingernails for 24 years. Before she cut them Oct. 10, the longest one measured 35 inches and they totaled about 160 inches, she said.

But the inconvenience she had suffered trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records recently turned to pain.

“For about the last year, they’d been hurting me,” Adams told Dallas-Fort Worth television station KDFW. “Besides, the world record holder is a man from India, and he has me beat by 76 inches. I would never have been able to pass him.” She said she kept her clippings, but hasn’t decided what to do with them.