He Spent 66 Years Growing His Fingernails. One Hand Made History.
In 1952, a teacher in Pune, India broke one of her long fingernails when a student accidentally knocked it. She told the class: unless you grow long nails, you will never understand the kind of care required not to break them. Most of the class heard a lesson. Sixteen-year-old Shridhar Chillal heard a dare, and he spent the next 66 years winning it. By November 2014, when Guinness World Records officially measured the five nails on his left hand in Pune City, Maharashtra, they had a combined length of 909.6 centimetres, just shy of 30 feet, making them the longest fingernails ever grown on a single hand. His thumbnail alone measured 197.8 centimetres, or 6 feet and 6 inches, roughly the height of a standard doorway. His middle finger nail was 186.6 centimetres. His little finger was 179.1 centimetres. Each nail was longer than most people are tall. He had never trimmed them once in six and a half decades.
Living with them required constant adaptation. Shridhar became a photographer and had a custom camera handle built to accommodate his nails. He slept carefully. He moved carefully. He did everything on one side of his body with extraordinary deliberateness for 66 years. Then in July 2018, he made the decision to cut them off. He described the experience as difficult but said the time had come. After receiving his Guinness certification he had said that being recognized felt like achieving the biggest goal of his life. The nails were not simply discarded: they are now permanently displayed at Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum locations in New York and Amsterdam, preserved behind glass as the physical record of one man's very long commitment to a very unusual decision made as a teenager in 1952. He also holds the record for longest fingernail ever for his coiled thumbnail specifically. Both records remain his.
