Although it may be a little corny, Fayette County is now home to two world champions. Heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield calls the county home and now another world record holder has popped into the county.

Fayetteville is in the Guiness Book of World Records, thanks to students from seven elementary schools who spent the busy fall season popping corn.

This past Saturday, students from North Fayette Elementary, East Fayette Elementary, Peachtree City Elementary, Peeples Elementary, Brooks Elementary, Kedron Elementary and Burch Elementary brought bags and bags of popcorn to Cinemark's Tinseltown Theatre in Fayetteville.

The students popped bags of popcorn and eclipsed the record of 7,400 cubic feet held by a school in Pittsville, Wis. since 1996. The industrious Cinemark staff and students attending the Fayette County After-School Program have been popping corn since August and the efforts paid off Saturday as officials from the Georgia Department of Weights and Measures and the Fayette County Environmental Health Department certified the world record with 7,838 cubic feet of popcorn, which is enough to fill three 18-wheelers. The popcorn was placed in a 34 feet diameter container that measured four feet high.

Burch Elementary popped the most corn and received a $250 gift certificate from Cinemark Theatre for their efforts. All the participants received free theatre tickets and the After-School Program received 100 tickets to use as an incentive for its reading program.

After School Program director Julie Simpson said she was approached by the theatre company during the late summer to see if there was interest among her students in trying to break a world record.

The situation worked out perfectly, since most of the After School sites have popcorn machines on site to provide students with snacks after school. As students popped the corn, Simpson said the students learned how to estimate how much corn they were going to pop and how much raw popcorn donated from Cinemark would be needed to reach their goal.