Thomas Wedders was a famous man back during his time in the eighteenth century. He worked with a traveling circus where he showed off his one most impressive feature – his extremely large nose. Wedders was from Yorkshire, UK, and earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records and maintains his record for the longest human nose to this very day.
Now, Wedders is getting a second chance at fame after his waxwork resurfaced and showed the world just how large this man’s nose really was. While only the waxwork remains to showcase the man’s nose, his record continues to be the Guinness World Record. The man’s nose measured 7.5 inches or 19 centimeters, which is much longer than an average man’s nose.
A photograph of the man’s waxwork from a Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit was snapped and shared with people online via Reddit. As soon as people began taking a look at Wedders’s long nose, they knew that his nose was one for the record books because no one has a nose that long.
Back in 1896, the Strand Magazine Vol XI published some details on Thomas Wedders’s nose according to The Daily Star.
“Thus, if noses were ever uniformly exact in representing the importance of the individual, this worthy ought to have amassed all the money in Threadneedle Street and conquered all Europe.”
In addition to his extremely long nose, the publication made it seem that Thomas Wedders was not exactly the smartest individual in the world.
“But either his chin was too weak or his brow too low, or Nature had so exhausted herself in the task of giving this prodigy a nose as to altogether forget to endow him with brains; or perhaps, the nose crowded out this latter commodity. At all events, we are told this Yorkshireman expired, nose and all, as he had lived, in a condition of mind best described as the most abject idiocy.”
In addition to this publication’s account of Wedders’s large nose, the Guinness World Records website also writes about his record-breaking nose.
“There are historical accounts that Thomas Wedders, who lived in England during the 1770s and was a member of a traveling circus, had a nose measuring 19cm (7.5in) long.”
Most of the details of Thomas Wedders’s life have been lost to history. Besides the fact that he traveled with a circus showing off his prominent feature to a paying audience, much of Thomas’s life remains a mystery. He is thought to have lived into his fifties dying in Yorkshire in middle age.
Shocked viewers on Reddit shared modern reactions to the man with the longest nose in the world.
“They say your brain automatically ignores looking at your own nose but yeah I don’t know about that guy.”
“What is actually happening here? Tumor? Growth? Random genetic mishap? Do the nostrils extend all the way to the tip?? I have so many questions…,” wrote another.
What do you think about this world record nose?
