Claim:
Thomas Wedders (or Wadhouse) is recorded as having the world’s longest nose at 7.5 inches.
Rating:
True ( About this rating? )
Context:
Historical accounts report that Thomas Wedders, or Wadhouse, had a nose that measured 7.5 inches long. Although Guinness World Records was unable to verify this "because his existence predates the camera," the group posthumously awarded Wedders the title of world’s “longest nose.”
With a nose that measures the length of a standard pencil, Thomas Wedders, also referred to as "Wadhouse," holds a large presence in some circles of the internet.
Wedders' digital legacy largely began in 2022 when Ripley's Believe It Or Not! posted photos of his wax likeness to X and Facebook .
In the years since, other social media users have shared wax and photo replicas of Wedders' impressively long snout online, including to platforms like TikTok , YouTube , X and Reddit , including the post below. As of this writing, the post had received more than 15,000 upvotes.
Thomas Wadhouse, born in England, circa 1730, was a performer in various circus sideshows in the mid-18th century. Wedders is chiefly known for having the world's longest nose, allegedly measuring 7.5 inches (19 cm) long.
by u/Stotallytob3r in interestingasfuck
Guinness World Records notes that Wedders, who lived in the 1700s, is believed to have had the longest nose ever according to historical accounts, but the true length of his nose cannot be verified because "his existence predates the camera." Even so, Guinness awarded Wedders the posthumous award of " Longest Nose ," citing historical accounts that the member of a "travelling freak circus" had a nose that measured 7.7 inches long.
We therefore rate this claim as "True."
Wedders is noted in the 1896 book " Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine ," a digital version of which is hosted by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The book is described as an "encyclopedic collection of rare and extraordinary cases and of the most striking instances of abnormality in all branches of medicine and surgery."
On page 252 , Wedders is described as:
Early in the last century a man, Thomas Wedders (or Wadhouse), with a nose 7 ½ inches long, was exhibited throughout Yorkshire. This man expired as he had lived, in a condition of mind best described as the most abject idiocy. The accompanying illustration [below] is taken from a reproduction of an old print and is supposed to be a true likeness of this unfortunate individual.
(Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, 1896, page 252)
Wedders was also mentioned in an 1896 issue of The Strand Magazine, Volume 11 , a British magazine that published short stories and popular nonfiction, according to the University of Pennsylvania's online book database, The Online Books Page .
On page 82, a description reads:
Abnormal noses frequently set all canons at defiance by being hugely significant of just nothing at all.
Early in the last century a man, Thomas Wedders (or, rather, Wadhouse), with a nose of seven and a half inches long, was exhibited throughout Yorkshire.
Thus, if noses were ever uniformly exact in representing the importance of the individual, this worthy [man] ought to have amassed all the money in Threadneedle Street and conquered all Europe, for this prodigious nose of his was a compound of the acquisitive with the martial. But either his chin was too weak or his brow too low, or Nature had so exhausted herself in the task of given 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 the Yorkshireman expired, nose and all, as he head lived, in a condition of mind best described as idiocy the most abject.
( The Strand Magazine, Volume 11, 1896, page 82)
The book titled, " Usefully Useless: Everything You'd Never Learn at School (But May Like to Know) ," written by Mark Hanks, also referred Wedders on page 259. The passage read:
Thomas Wedders – was an English circus performer in the 1700s, and is thought to have had the longest known nose in history. It measured 19 centimetres, and earned him a living working in freak shows all over England. Thomas was considered mentally deficient, so his nose served him well career-wise. Today a waxwork of the Yorkshireman can be seen at Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum in London.
As of this publication, Mehmet Özyürek of Turkey was awarded the longest nose on a living person (Wedders' record was set posthumously), a record he still holds today after dying in 2023 . His nose measured 3.46 inches from bridge to tip — nearly half the nose credited to Wedders.
Sources:
Digital Collections - National Library of Medicine. https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-57221200R-bk . Accessed 30 July 2024.
"Englishman's 7.5-Inch Nose Was the Longest Ever Recorded." Guinness World Records, 25 Oct. 2023, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2023/10/englishmans-7-5-inch-nose-was-the-longest-ever-recorded-760154.html .
Hanks, Mark. Usefully Useless: Everything You'd Never Learn at School (But May Like to Know). Random House, 2012.
"'I Have Been Blessed': Mehmet Özyürek on His Record-Breaking Nose." Guinness World Records, 26 Nov. 2021, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2021/11/i-have-been-blessed-mehmet-ozyurek-on-his-record-breaking-nose-683648.html .
Log in or Sign up to View. https://www.facebook.com/login/ . Accessed 30 July 2024.
"Longest Nose." Guinness World Records, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/76331-longest-nose.html . Accessed 30 July 2024.
"Man 'Blessed' with World's Longest Nose Dies Suddenly at Age 75." Guinness World Records, 22 May 2023, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2023/5/man-blessed-with-worlds-longest-nose-dies-suddenly-at-age-75-750302.html .
The most important people in the world. Thomas Wadhouse, the World's Longest Nose Ever in the World. 2023. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-6L8KumKFY .
The Strand Magazine January-June 1896: Vol 11. 1896. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/sim_strand-magazine_january-june-1896_11 .
The Strand Magazine Archives. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=strandmag . Accessed 30 July 2024.
TikTok - Make Your Day. https://www.tiktok.com/@africa.is.powerful/video/7237427589772659974 . Accessed 30 July 2024.
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