Those ‘Damn Hiccups’

The longest recorded case of hiccups lasted an astonishing 68 years, beginning in 1922 and ending in 1990.

This medical mystery affected Charles Osborne, an Iowa farmer who began hiccuping after a seemingly innocuous accident while weighing a hog.

The incident caused a small blood vessel in his brain to burst, disrupting a part of the brain responsible for inhibiting hiccups. Initially, Osborne experienced an estimated 40 hiccups per minute, totaling over 430 million hiccups throughout his lifetime. Despite this persistent and involuntary condition, he led a relatively normal life—he married twice, had eight children, and continued working.

His hiccups slowed down to about 20 per minute later in life but, remarkably, stopped suddenly in 1990, just a year before his death in 1991. Doctors were baffled by his condition, and Osborne became a medical curiosity, even appearing in the Guinness Book of World Records and on TV shows like "Ripley’s Believe It or Not!" Despite numerous treatments and medical consultations, no cure was ever found, making his ordeal one of the most peculiar and enduring cases in medical history.