Getting into the Guinness Book of World Records is no ordinary feat. While some people earn their position through talents and extraordinary skills, others are included simply because they were born with rather peculiar features.
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World’s largest nose
71-year-old Mehmet Özyürek got his name etched into the book because he has the longest nose in the world. The Turkish man earned the title in 2010, when he went on the Italian programme Lo Show dei Record to show off his gigantic snout. They measured it on the set, and found that it was an incredible 8.8 centimetres ‘from the bridge to the tip.’ It says on the Guinness World Records:
The longest nose on a living person measures 8.8 cm (3.46 in) from the bridge to the tip and belongs to Mehmet Özyürek (Turkey). It was measured on the set of Lo Show dei Record in Rome, Italy, on 18 March 2010.
According to AEDIT, a platform for aesthetic resources and solutions, an average man's nose is around 2.2 inches long, which is around 5.5 cm, while a female nose is 5 cm.
Luckily for him, he didn’t have any contenders, so he is the owner of the largest nose on a living person. We say living, because there’s another who walked this planet that supposedly had a bigger nose. In fact, it’s so colossal that it puts Özyürek’s trunk to shame.
An even larger nose
The nose belonged to one Thomas Wedders, a British circus member who lived in England during the 1770s. Guinness World Records says that:
There are historical accounts that Thomas Wedders, who lived in England during the 1770's and was a member of a travelling freak circus, had a nose measuring 19 cm (7.5 in) long.
Since he is no longer alive, no one can confirm whether the nose was truly as long as legend says it was. The size we know of today could be exaggerated as the story passed on through the years. But nevertheless a wax replica, based on old cartoons and drawings of the man, was created for the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, and it sure is a sight to behold.