WORLD RECORD IN TAMPA!

By DAVENE JEFFREY Staff Reporter
AP–Tampa, Florida, U.S.A. - Wallace Reyes and his wife Margarita completed their world-record attempt to make the longest cigar in history on Saturday, finishing a 30.78 meters - long cigar at the Tampa Heritage Festival in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida.
The cigar was completed in front of hundreds of onlookers and with the help of more than a dozen volunteers who helped to complete the project in about 8 hours.

The Reyeses created the giant cigar – 30.78 meters long, approximately an inch thick (64 ring) and 53 1/2 pounds – to mark the 85th anniversary of their Gonzalez Habano Cigar Co. Counting labor and materials, the cost of the single stick was about $5,100 US dollars. The project required about 76 hours in total.

The record-setting cigar overwhelmed the previous longest-ever by an amazing 34 feet. The world's-longest-cigar record had been held by Cuba's Jose (Cueto) Castelar, who put together a 67-foot cigar in Havana in 2005. Assuming no one creates a longer cigar, the Reyes's record cigar will be acknowledged in the 2008 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.