What do you think of this fact?
Hiccups get annoying after five minutes. Charles Osborne from Iowa, in the US, had them for 68 years. Almost without a break.
It all started with a hog
According to Smithsonian Magazine, it happened in 1922. Osborne was hanging a hog of about 350 pounds for butchering. He picked it up and fell, and shortly afterwards the hiccups started. They wouldn’t stop for decades.
According to Smithsonian, a doctor later suggested the fall had destroyed a small area of the brain stem that normally suppresses hiccups. Osborne himself said he had “busted a blood vessel the size of a pin” in his brain.
430 million hiccups
According to Smithsonian, Osborne hiccupped 20 to 40 times a minute on average. Over the years, that added up to an estimated 430 million hiccups. According to Guinness, it’s the longest known attack of hiccups.
Still, Osborne lived a fairly normal life. According to Smithsonian, he married twice and had eight children. He learned to breathe in between hiccups to muffle the “hic” sound.
Bonus fact: After his story became known, Osborne received about 4,000 letters with hiccup cures, according to Guinness. None of them worked.
The longest break he remembered lasted about 50 hours, according to Guinness. Then they started again, as if nothing had happened.
And then, in 1990, the hiccups suddenly stopped. Just like that, with nobody knowing why. 68 years after they had started.
So if you get the hiccups and hold your breath, take comfort. For most people, they’re over after a few minutes.