He Was the Heaviest Person Ever Lived

His name might not be familiar to you, but Jon Brower Minnoch [Minn-awk] was quite a heavy guy. In fact, he holds the record for being the heaviest human ever recorded! At his peak weight, he weighed a whopping 1,400 pounds!

Now, let’s go back to his early life. When he was just 12 years old, Jon already weighed 294 pounds. By the time he turned 22, he weighed 500 pounds! As you can imagine by now, his weight continued to increase steadily over the years. At the age of 36, he was hospitalized, because he had problems with his heart and difficulty breathing. On the bright side, that same year, he married his partner, Jeannette, and later became a proud father of two children. But Jon’s weight kept climbing, making his body retain a lot of fluid.

Transportation was no easy feat for Jon, as it took over 12 people and a custom stretcher to move him. When he was admitted to the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, he was estimated to weigh over 1,400 pounds by the local doctor. It took more than 10 individuals from the staff working together to simply roll him over for linen changes.

After spending over two years in the hospital, on a special low calorie diet, Jon was discharged weighing 476 pounds. He had lost about 924 pounds, which is the largest human weight loss ever documented at the time! However, he was admitted back to the hospital about a year later, as his weight had gone back up. Sadly, Jon passed away in 1983, at the age of 41.

Speaking of people with unusual measurements, ever heard about Robert Pershing Wadlow? People also called him the Alton Giant or the Giant of Illinois. This guy was seriously tall — we’re talking 8 feet 11.1 inches tall! That’s even past the tallest NBA player in history, Gheorghe Muresan, who stretched to 7 feet 7 inches.

Wadlow’s tall stature was due to a condition of his pituitary gland, which meant he had an abnormally high level of human growth hormone. Even at the time of his passing at age 22, there was no sign of his growth slowing down. Imagine how hard it would be to find clothes that fit and desks to sit at if you were that tall!

Despite his large size, Wadlow didn’t let it stop him from pursuing his dreams. He went to college looking to study law and even became a star after touring with the Ringling Brothers Circus and the International Shoe Company. But don’t get it twisted — he told people he was working in advertising, not exhibiting as a performer. Wadlow’s legacy lives on to this day. A life-size statue of him was erected in Alton, Illinois, and his story continues to fascinate people around the world.

A woman named Cathie Jung [Y-oong] set a similarly interesting record: the one for having the smallest waist on a person. Care to hear about her measurements? Her waist was said to be only 15 inches! That means you could almost circle her waist with two dollar bills, can you believe it?

Cathie hasn’t achieved this by starving herself or anything like that. She’s been wearing corsets for the past 25 years, only taking them off when she showers or when the weather is too hot to bear. Cathie is a real corset queen, owning over 100 handmade corsets. This woman has even appeared on TV shows in Japan, the US, and Western Europe. But don’t worry, her corsets don’t stop her from doing what she loves — fishing with her husband on their boat, “The Bobcat”. And she even has a special swimming costume with a corset sewn in so she can still go to the beach!

Well, well, well, it looks like this next story is about a real-life Sleeping Beauty! A little boy named Wyatt Shaw became quite the medical enigma when he fell into a deep slumber for not one, not two, but a whopping eleven days after serving as the ring bearer at his uncle’s wedding. Now, I’m no expert, but that sounds like the kind of nap I dream of taking after a long day at work. Unfortunately, for Wyatt and his family, it was far from a restful experience. His mom, Amy, struggled to wake him up the next day, and despite regaining consciousness briefly, Wyatt fell back into a deep sleep.

After visiting a doctor in his hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Wyatt was sent to Louisville for further testing. And let me tell you, those doctors did not mess around. They performed a lot of procedures to try and figure out what was wrong with this unusual patient, including multiple MRIs. They tested for everything from viruses to bacteria, but all the results came back negative. Wyatt was free of any known viruses or infections that could cause such severe fatigue.

The doctors at the hospital even reached out to experts in Minnesota and London to try and get to the bottom of Wyatt’s mysterious sleep. Apparently, the doctor in London had seen a child sleep for ten days straight before, but Wyatt was determined to break that record and slept for eleven days. Talk about a competitive spirit! Finally, the doctors gave Wyatt a specific type of medication — generally used for seizures — and he woke up. It’s still unclear what caused his snooze fest, but doctors suspect that it could be a disruption in the parts of the brain responsible for regulating sleep patterns.

While Wyatt wasn’t diagnosed with Kleine-Levin [k-l-AY-n leh-VEEN] Syndrome, a disorder that causes a person to sleep for 12 to 24 hours a day, he showed similar symptoms to patients who have had the condition. When he finally woke up, he had difficulty swallowing and was unable to walk or speak because he had been asleep for so long. The good news is that Wyatt slowly began to improve after waking up. His speech and mobility got better, and doctors were hopeful that he would not experience prolonged sleep like that again.

This next unusual record you’ll surely not want to break. Ever heard of Charles Osborne, the man who had hiccups for 68 years? It all started when he fell down and hurt his head. This led to a small area of his brain being injured, which triggered the hiccup response. From then on, Osborne hiccupped non-stop, with an average of 20-40 involuntary spasms per minute. He hiccupped an estimated 430 million times before his passing in 1991 at the age of 97. That’s a lot of hiccups!

Osborne tried to find a cure for his condition but couldn’t find a permanent one. One physician managed to stop the hiccups by placing him on carbon monoxide and oxygen, but sadly, Osborne couldn’t breathe in properly with this gas combination. Instead, he learned a breathing technique that minimized the “hic” sound, which is caused by the sudden closure of the vocal cords after an involuntary contraction. He breathed in between hiccups to suppress the noise. Imagine doing that for 68 years! Despite his condition, Osborne was a fun-loving guy who enjoyed joking around with people. He didn’t even talk about his hiccupping much!

One neurosurgeon had another theory on the cause of the hiccups. He believed that Osborne might have sustained a minor injury to the ribs during his 1922 accident, which could have led to the endless hiccupping. Most hiccups are triggered by actions such as drinking too much soda, eating too much, getting excited, or swallowing air when chewing gum. They usually last just a few minutes and are more inconvenient than medically concerning. However, some hiccups continue for more than 48 hours, at which point they’re considered chronic or persistent. In rare cases like Osborne’s, hiccups can last more than a month, becoming unmanageable.

But don’t worry, there are lots of remedies for hiccups. Take this folk cure for instance: drinking water through a paper towel! One explanation for this remedy is that we have to put in a bit more effort to get the water out of the glass, similar to how a vacuum does its suction.