New Delhi : In an extensive history of fingernail-growers, record holders don’t get more iconic than Lee Redmond of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, who carefully nurtured her nails for 30 years and achieved the title for Longest fingernails on a pair of hands (female) ever.
Lee’s record-breaking story began in 1979, when her nails were less than 5 cm (2 in) long.
She decided to stop filing them and challenged herself to see how long they would grow before they started to bend out of shape.
But Lee’s nails never started to twist like other famously long fingernails. Instead, they grew out in huge extended arches, likely as a result of her careful daily manicure procedure.
Lee often said that for some reason she felt protected by her fingernails, as if they formed a shield around her. That shield was cracked in 2009.
Lee was a passenger in an SUV which lost control and slammed into the side of another vehicle, that in turn crashed into a third and a fourth car. Lee and her driver were immediately rushed to hospital.
The record holder survived major injuries, but sadly, her fingernails did not endure the accident.
Lee recalled the winding moment she realised that parts of her snapped nails were lying in front of her in the road.
At 76 years old, Lee is now retired and spends a great deal of time with her family, which now includes a lot of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
