An American teenager has broken the world record for the most retweeted tweet ever.

Carter Wilkerson's attempt to win a year's supply of his favourite food - chicken nuggets - broke Ellen DeGeneres' record when he passed 3,430,249 retweets on Tuesday.


The 16-year-old started his Twitter challenge on April 5 when he asked the Wendy's fast food chain how many retweets he would need to receive a year's supply of chicken nuggets for free.

"18 million," came the reply from the fried chicken store's official Twitter handle - within a minute of his tweet.



"Consider it done," replied Carter, despite having only 150 Twitter followers at the time.


He then turned to the Internet, posting a screenshot of the tweets, writing: "Help me please. A man needs his nuggs."

The Internet responded, and how. His tweet was retweeted by a whole host of celebrities and companies including Apple Music, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Twitter.


On Tuesday, his message had been retweeted more than 3.4 million times, beating the record that Ellen set at the 2014 Oscars, when she posted an all-star selfie that included Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lawrence. That tweet currently has 3.4 million retweets. That bump came after the TV host tried to hold on to her old record by proposing whoever retweeted the teen's tweet also retweet her picture.