Thomas Wedders was an eighteenth-century man who worked with a traveling circus. His most impressive feature, which garnered him much attention, was his extraordinarily large nose. Wedders comes from Yorkshire, UK, and still holds the world record for the longest human nose to this day, as noted in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Wedders is getting a second chance at fame after his waxwork resurfaced, showing the world just how large this man’s nose really was. Although all that remains of the man is his waxwork nose, he still holds the Guinness World Record. The man had a nose that was 7.5 inches long or 19 centimeters. This is much longer than what is average for a man’s nose.
A man’s waxwork from a Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit was captured in a photo and shared on Reddit. People knew Wedders had a record-breaking nose as soon as they laid eyes on it because of its exceptional length.
According to The Daily Star, back in 1896 the Strand Magazine published some details on Thomas Wedders’s nose.
“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.”
The publication made it seem that Thomas Wedders was not the smartest man alive, due in part to his very long nose.
“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.”
Furthermore, Guinness World Records also covers Wedders’s large nose in detail on their website.
“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.”
While many details of Thomas Wedders’s life have been lost to history, we know that he travelled with a circus and displayed his prominent feature to paying audiences. It is thought that he lived into his fifties and died in Yorkshire at middle age.
Disbelieving viewers on Reddit shared their 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…,” said another person.
This world record nose is pretty impressive, don’t you think?
