Fitchburg museum claims world record for largest paper airplane

FITCHBURG, Mass. — A Fitchburg museum set a world record Tuesday for the largest paper airplane and largest paper sculpture.

Project Soar was undertaken by the Revolving Museum in Fitchburg and its founder and director Jerry Beck.

“Five-thousand-plus people working together from all over … throughout new England, believing that their art and their writing and their expression can mean something,” Beck said of the project.

He said it was citizens, students, artists and businesses involved in the plane's design and decoration -- making it a community project.

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“It’s all corrugated cardboard four-by-eight sheets that have been glued together, then on top of that is the paper that has been made by all the different groups,” Beck explained.

Officials said the project is a symbol for the struggling former mill town’s effort to rebuild its economy using one of the town’s recently closed paper mills.

“So, you can apply to create any record for Guinness World Records an we’ve been asking them for the world’s largest paper airplane and it’s a public art – it’s a sculpture,” Beck said.

The plane was 64 feet long and was hoisted up into the air with a crane – though it wasn’t ‘launched.’

Cox Media Group