Everyone knows someone whose nose is a little bit bigger than average, and some people might even know someone whose nose is really big, but no matter how large a schnoz you've ever seen, it probably won't ever compare to Thomas Wedders' nose. Wedders owns a world record that likely will never be broken. That's because his nose was a whopping 7.5 inches long.
Hailing from Yorkshire, England, Wedders was well known in his day back in the 1700s, since he spent much of his life traveling with a circus to share his unique feature with thousands of spectators. His massive appendage earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Sadly, no photos are available of Wedders' nose, but there are some wax figures of his likeness around the world.
Details of Wedders' life aren't very well known, aside from the fact that he lived in the 1770s. The Daily Star found an 1896 article about Wedders though, which reportedly shed more light on him. Among the details, that he wasn't very smart.
The story states, "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, 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 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."
A photo of a wax figure of Wedders sparked a lot of interest on Reddit, with one commenter asking, "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," and another wondering, "They say your brain automatically ignores looking at your own nose but yeah I don't know about that guy." One other joked, "Ain't no way... Squidward irl."
Wedders' is believed to have died in his early 50s.