Rainbow boa at WorldPride breaks Guinness record

June 20 (UPI) -- A rainbow boa unveiled Thursday at a WorldPride event in New York City broke a world record.

The nearly 1.2-mile-long rainbow boa was unraveled Thursday morning at the gay pride celebration in Times Square with the help of drag queens such as host Shangela, born Darius Jeremy Pierce.

Ripley's Believe It or Not! and Madame Tussauds New York collaborated to break the Guinness World Record, and Shangela of RuPaul's Drag Race and actor in A Star is Born hosted the event.

"It was 1,919.5 meters - - a little less than 1.2 miles," said Spencer Cammarano, an official Guinness World Record adjudicator, confirming the boa had set a world record.

Stacey Schuster of "Ripley's Believe It or Not! said that the boa took a couple a weeks to sew.

"It was a thousand separate boas and we sewed and we finagled and we did it," Schuster said.

Ripley's and Madame Tussauds will donate some of their proceeds to the Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention and suicide prevent services to LGBTQ people under 25 during Pride month.

WorldPride falls on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, which sparked gay rights activism.