Noses, everybody has one, and they come in all different shapes and sizes. They are an important feature and prominent on our faces so it's no wonder there are clubs for noses, and competitions to declare the owner of the biggest nose! There are even fetish websites strictly for people who enjoy large noses, and the bigger the better! Noses are noticeable, so when a person has a large nose they are unforgettable, and there are quite a few notable noses in our recent history, like the well known Jimmy Durante for one. This is also true for our more distant ancestors in times past. Here are 10 notable noses in history.
10 Rudolph l of Hapsburg
Rudolph married and bought, with his two daughters, his way to the Crown in 1273. He also made deals with Holy Roman Church, promising the Catholics to lead a new crusade for Pope Gregory X. Afterwards, King Rudolph turned his eye to Austria and established the prominent House of Hapsburg by placing his two sons in powerful positions, he is both known as a generous king and as a wicked king but he is better known for his wickedly generous nose.
9 Nefertiti
Recently, thanks to a CT scan, researchers have been able to reveal Nefertiti's true face and with it, her true nose. And she wasn't exactly the young and flawless Egyptian Queen, like the mental image we have come to associate with her, and the one she associated with herself. The image people usually call to mind, when thinking of Nefertiti, is the intricately carved limestone bust that was discovered in 1912 hidden in the studio of royal sculptor Thutmose. Nefertiti, wife and consort of Pharoah Akenaten who ruled Egypt over 3,000 years ago, appeared to be as gorgeous as she was powerful. Unfortunately, due to the recent CT scan we are forced to take our beer goggles off and get a sobering look at the real face of Queen Nefertiti. Like our favorite supermodels, Nefertiti just wasn't as perfect as the media portrayed her. Hidden beneath the layers of limestone and stucco was, at the core, a mold of Nefertiti's true face. Her nose was bent and protruding with a large bump on the bridge, her face sagged at the jowls, and was quite aged. In the final layer, Thutmose smoothed out her tired eyes and her beak like nose giving us the great-grandpa of airbrushing. Setting unachievable standards as a form of manipulation by the media? Couldn't be.
8 Cleopatra
Here is another example of a female Egyptian ruler with a hooked nose, the difference here being that Cleopatra owned it and plastered her silhouette all over Egyptian coinage. In fact, there is a whole contingency theory based on Cleopatra's nose. The famous French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, first introduced this topic remarking that, "Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed." A small event, or slightly larger in the case of Cleopatra's nose, can change the course of history and her nose gave her the visage of power and masculinity which enabled her to rule with authority gaining the respect of all those she came into contact with. Like Julius Caesar or Mark Antony, who are both rumored to have loved giving Eskimo kisses.
7 Tycho Brahe
Besides having an awesome name, Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer in the 1500's and he paved the way for many discoveries by fixing the positions of the planets and the stars. Kepler's laws of planetary motions are based on Brahe's observations, and he also discovered Cassiopeia and some particulars about the moon's orbit. Although he never did accept the notion that the earth revolved around the sun, and instead he thought of the earth as an immobile body, which the sun and everything evolved around. His calculations were just a tiny bit off, and that may have also been the case when he dueled over a math problem with a fellow gentry.The gentleman and Brahe engaged in a duel, in the dead of night, and the weapons that were chosen were swords. His opponent having spent less time gazing at the stars and active in sword practice, quickly sliced the bridge of Brahe's nose clean off. He wore a shiny copper nose, not gold or silver as the legend recalls, for the rest of his strange and eccentric life. Brahe regularly employed dwarfs as jesters, he kept a pet elk (which died after breaking a leg attempting to scale some stairs drunk), he dabbled in alchemy, and he tyrannized the local peasantry on a regular basis.
6 Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano is included because he was awesome, he had a big-big nose, and he was a real boy unlike our favorite fictional character Pinnochio. Cyrano's nose was big enough to have a whole play based on it, and in the plays and movies he hid behind a beautiful face, but he contributed his wit and charm behind the scenes. In reality, Cyrano was a French soldier, satirist, dramatist, and...science fiction writer. Yes, that's right. He can be credited for applying the rocket to space travel, and for inventing the ram jet in his stories. In Cyrano's day, around 1637, he could be found drinking, gambling, or dueling. So much so that several of his friends nicknamed him the "Demon of Courage," because he had been in as many duels as the days they had known him. Cyrano died shrouded in mystery, some say he was killed by a planking falling on his head and others say that he had been forced into a mental asylum by his brother with a "secret illness," which was probably syphilis. Cyrano later died in a street brawl, probably due to aggression as a side-effect of a syphilis infection.
5 Leopold II of Belgium
Lost in Belgium's grisly past is King Leopold. He was once hailed as a hero for civilizing the Congo, but in actuality Leopold simultaneously terrorized the locals and sucked them dry of all their natural resources. At one time, a hulking statue of the hook-nosed King sat front-and-center in the lavish Royal Museum, made possible by the copious amounts of money he was stealing from the Congo and it's inhabitants, and King Leopold never even bothered to visit. If you were to visit the Royal Museum now, photos depicting torture and mutilated bodies sit in his statue's place. It was the turn of the century, and King Leopold felt that every great country should have colonies and so Belgium's spin on colonization with torture began. He first set about mining the Congo's rubber, ivory, timber, gun, and copal. The region quickly turned into a rubber making sweat shop, and if quotas weren't met the King's militia came to rape and slaughter the inhabitants and then burn the homes of the workers. The soldiers collected the hands of their still breathing victims for their Belgium masters as proof of a job well done. One historian estimates the death toll was 13 million in that area alone, and there is certainly evidence of a past depopulation event in the Congo today.
4 Michelangelo's David
Michelangelo himself had a distinct nose that was flattened and squished close to his face. This is because when Michelangelo was fifteen he had a violent encounter with a fellow student, Pietro Torrigiano. Michelangelo, known for his sharp wit, criticized Pietro's work one too many times. Becoming enraged, Pietro punched Michelangelo in the nose with such force that he crushed it leaving Michelangelo permanently disfigured. Possibly experiencing nose envy, from that time forward Michelangelo's work featured a series of prominent noses. Powerful Piero Soderino, a top magistrate criticized Michelangelo's statue David at it's revealing, saying that David's nose was much too large which made him aesthetically unappealing and needed adjustment. Cleverly, Michelangelo palmed some marble dust and climbed back up his latter, he then pretended to chisel at the offending feature, which satisfied the ignorant Soderino.
3 Thomas Wedders
Thomas Wedders was a circus side show act in the 1700's, but what was amazing about Wedders was his seven and a half inch nose! His super sized nose ensured Wedders a place in our hearts, our history books, and in Ripley's Believe It Or Not Picadilly Circus. But Wedders wasn't always so admired. One author, George Goulde, wrote, "This man expired as he had lived, in a condition of mind best described as the most abject idiocy." Well, at least Wedders didn't die in abject obscurity like Mr. Gould.
2 Big Nose Kate
Big Nose Kate (A.k.a. Katie Elder) was a rip-roaring, hard-drinking, gun-slinging, prostitute of the wild-wild west. She associated with some of the most prolific outlaws and lawmen around, but Kate is better known for betraying her lover, Doc Holliday. She did this by signing a deposition saying she witnessed her famous husband, Holliday, hold up a stage coach. Yet, she is also known for her extraordinarily large nose. As Kate Elder, she worked in a brothel run by Nellie Bessie Earp, wife of James Earp. James Earp was brother to Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp of Dodge City, Kansas. Through her association with the Earp brothers, she met Doc Holiday, and it is rumored that Kate rescued Holliday from a crazy mob out for revenge by setting fire to a shed and creating a diversion for his escape. Almost burning down the whole town in the process. Later, after Holliday allegedly participated in a stage coach robbery, some town officials decided revenge was in order and they convinced Kate, on a drunken binge and humiliated after a public screaming match with Holliday, to snitch out Holliday with a written statement. Sobering up the next day and realizing what she had done, Kate recanted her story, but the relationship between Holliday and Kate never recovered.
1 Big Nose George
Big Nose George's real name was George Parrot, an already unfortunate name for a man destined to have a beak like nose. George is famous for being the only person in American history to be made into a pair of shoes. George was a cattle rustler, train robber, and gunman who circulated Wyoming with his gang and eventually he ran into trouble after he and his gang of outlaws murdered two lawmen in a botched train robbery. He was arrested later after boasting about the deed all over town, and soon after was hauled from jail by an angry mob and lynched to death.
The top of George's skull was sawed off by Dr. John Osborne and presented to his medical assistant, 15 year old Lillian Heath, who later became Wyoming's first female doctor. She even used the skull as an ashtray, a pen-holder, and a door stop. Next, his body was skinned and sent to a tannery to be made into a pair of shoes and a medical bag. Dr. Osborne was eventually elected as first Democratic Governor of Wyoming, and wore the Big Nose George shoes to the Inaugural ball.
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