LONDON — You could say Richard Plaud's dreams of making the world's tallest matchstick sculpture may have gone up in smoke. The Frenchman spent the last eight years painstakingly piecing together ...

It's 10 a.m. in Gladbrook, Iowa, and down in the workshop in his basement, Pat Acton is doing what he does almost every morning: picking up matchsticks and gluing them together, one at a time. And ...