and mortals.
1 William Arden (Shakespeare)
2 Isaac Ayscough (Newton)
3 Johann Sebastian Lämmerhirt (Bach)
4 George Ball (Washington)
5 Thomas Randolph (Jefferson)
6 Johann Wolfgang Textor (von Goethe)
7 Wolfgang Amadeus Pertl (Mozart)
8 Napoleon Ramolino (Bonaparte)
9 Ludwig Keverich (van Beethoven)
10 Abraham Hanks (Lincoln)
11 Charles Wedgwood (Darwin)
12 Charles Barrow (Dickens)
13 Karl Pressburg (Marx)
14 Sigmund Nathanson (Freud)
15 George Bernard Gurly (Shaw)
16 Winston Jerome (Churchill)
17 Albert Koch (Einstein)
18 Charlie Hill (Chaplin)
19 Ernest Hall (Hemingway)
20 Frank Garaventi (Sinatra)
21 Mick Scutts (Jagger)
22 Sylvester Labofish (Stallone)
23 Stephen Pillsbury (King)
24 Arnold Jedrny (Schwarzenegger)
25 Michael Scruse (Jackson)
26 Osama Ghanem (bin Laden)
27 Tiger Punsawad (Woods)
– M.B.T.
9 People with Extra Limbs and Digits
1 MYRTLE CORBIN (1868–19??) ‘The woman from Texas with four legs’ was the only freak who could challenge the ‘King of Freaks’ Frank Lentini as a box-office attraction. (‘Freak’ expresses dramatic physical deviation from the norm and was not offensive to those in the sideshows.) The body of a twin grew from between Myrtle’s legs, well developed from the waist down and completely functional. Myrtle was married and, according to her billing, had five children – three from her own body and two from her twin’s.
2 JEAN BAPTISTA DOS SANTOS (1843–?) Born in Cuba, Jean (or Juan) was a good-looking, well-proportioned boy who happened to have two fully-functioning penises and an extra pair of legs behind and between his own, united along their length. His mental and physical capacities were considered above normal and so, according to one report, was his ‘animal passion’ and sexual functioning. He was exhibited in Havana in 1865 and later in Paris, where he is alleged to have had an affair with the three-legged courtesan, Blanche Dumas, who had two vaginas.
3 FOLDI FAMILY Written up in the book called Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine in 1896, the Foldi family was described as living in the tribe of the Hyabites in ‘Arabia’ for many generations. Each member of the large family had 24 digits. They confined their marriages to other members of the tribe, so the trait was usually inherited. In fact, if a baby was born with only 10 fingers and 10 toes, it was sacrificed as the product of adultery.
4 LALOO (1874–1905) Laloo was a Muslim born in Oovonin, Oudh, India. He had an extra set of arms, legs and sex organs from a headless twin attached to his body at the neck. He, too, travelled with carnivals and circuses in the US and Europe and was written up in many medical textbooks. He married in Philadelphia in 1894 and his wife travelled with him. His ‘parasitic twin’ was male, but the circuses liked to advertise it as female to add to Laloo’s strangeness.
5 FRANCESCO LENTINI (1889–1966) For years acknowledged as the ‘King of Freaks’, Frank Lentini had three legs, two sets of genital organs, four feet and sixteen toes. In order to counter his depression at being deformed, Lentini’s parents took him to an institution for handicapped children, where he saw boys and girls who were far worse off than he was. ‘From that time to this,’ he would later recall, ‘I’ve never complained. I think life is beautiful and I enjoy living it.’ He could use the third leg, which grew out of the base of his spine, as a stool. In his circus act he used it to kick a football the length of the sideshow tent. Born in Rosolini, Sicily, he moved to the US at the age of nine. He married and raised four children.
6 JEAN LIBBERA (1884–1934) ‘The Man with Two Bodies’ was born in Rome. He travelled with several circuses displaying his miniature ‘twin’, named Jacques. Jacques had hips, thighs, arms and legs. A German doctor using X-rays found a rudimentary structure resembling a head inside Jean’s body. Jean covered Jacques with a cape when he went out. Walking with his wife and four children he looked just like any other family man.
7 LOUISE L. (1869–?) Known as ‘La Dame á Quatre Jambes’ (‘the lady with four legs’), Louise was born in France. Attached to her pelvis was a second, rudimentary pelvis from which grew two atrophied legs. There were two rudimentary breasts where the legs joined her body. In spite of this handicap, Louise not only married but gave birth to two healthy daughters.
8 SHIVSHANKARI YAMANAPPA MOOTAGERI (1978– ) A young woman from Karnataka, India, Shivshankari has a third leg with nine toes growing out of the middle of her body. She views her anomaly as a divine blessing and supports her family by exhibiting herself locally.
9 BETTY LOU WILLIAMS (1932–1955) Betty Lou Williams was the daughter of poor black sharecroppers. She looked pretty and shapely in her two-piece bathing suit on the sideshow stage – but growing out of her left side was the bottom half of a body, with two legs and one misplaced arm. Betty, who died at the age of 23, made a good living during the Depression. Her friends say she died of a broken heart, jilted by a man she loved. However, the more probable cause of her death was complications from an asthma attack, aggravated by the second head inside her body.
10 Famous Noses
1 RUDOLF I OF HAPSBURG (German king and Holy Roman Emperor, 1218–91) According to one historian of anatomy, Rudolf ‘had so large a nose that no artist would ever paint its full dimension’.
2 MICHELANGELO (Italian artist, 1475–1564) Michelangelo’s nose was so squashed against his face that, in the words of one historian, ‘his forehead almost overhangs the nose’. As a boy, Michelangelo had mercilessly teased the painter Pietro Torrigiano while Torrigiano was trying to study some art inside a church. Angered, Torrigiano turned on young Michelangelo and, in his own words, ‘dealt him such a blow on the nose that I felt the bone and the cartilage yield under my fist as if they had been made of crisp wafer. And so he’ll go with my mark on him to his dying day’.
3 MATTHEW PARKER (English clergyman, 1504–75) Matthew Parker’s name entered the English language as ‘Nosey’ Parker – meaning someone who pokes his nose into other people’s business. Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth I. Though shy and modest, he was over-inquisitive about Church matters, and his enemies began to call him ‘Nosey’ Parker.
4 TYCHO BRAHE (Danish astronomer, 1546–1601) Brahe lost the bridge of his nose in a swordfight when he was 20 and replaced it with a silver one.
5 CYRANO DE BERGERAC (French dramatist, 1619–55) He really was a living person. He is said to have fought 1,000 duels over insults concerning his enormous nose.
6 THOMAS WEDDERS (English circus freak, 1700s) Wedders had the longest-known nose of any human being in history. It measured 7½ inches in length. He was exhibited throughout England and was said to be mentally retarded.
7 JOSEF MYSLIVEČEK (Czech composer, 1737–81) Nicknamed ‘The Bohemian’, Mysliveček was known for his operas Armida and Il Bellerofonte, and for the fact that he had no nose. In 1777, suffering from a venereal disease, he went to a third-rate doctor who told him that the only way to cure the disease was to remove his nose. So off it came. This led to the collapse of his career and he died in poverty.
8 DUKE OF WELLINGTON (British soldier and statesman, 1769–1852) In addition to the more familiar (and more respectful) nickname of ‘The Iron Duke’, Wellington was also called ‘Old Nosey’ by many