As it Happened: The Archive Edition - The Nose Episode

In October of 1979, 12-year-old Tricia Reay began to sneeze. And she kept sneezing. In all, she sneezed every day, non-stop, for 194 days, which helped her set a Guinness World Record for Longest Sneezing Fit.

Reay spoke with former As it Happens host Barbara Frum shortly after setting the record.

"Ah-CHOO! Well, it all started off as a cold," explains Reay, who guesses she was sneezing every 20 seconds, for every waking hour.

When asked if she sneezes at night too, Reay responds: "Ah-CHOO! Well, once I'm sound asleep I'm all right, but if I half wake up I sneeze."

At the time of the interview, doctors believed that something in Reay's brain kept sending the message to keep sneezing. Despite trying various types of medications, anesthetizing her nose, and hypnotizing Reay, nothing worked.

"Do people laugh at you?" Frum asks.

"Well, they just look at you as if to say: 'why are you out? You've got such a bad cold'," says Reay.

Her classmates, however, had a different response.

"Ah-CHOO! Today they wanted my autograph."

You can hear our interview with Tricia Reay, as well as these stories on The Nose Episode:

A doctor in Philadelphia gets a martini toothpick stuck up his nose.

A man in Colorado learns he's had a nail stuck in his nose for 30 years.

A trombonist can't hold back a sneeze during a performance.

An interview with the world's first expert in nose picking research.

An odour scientist has such an excellent sense of smell that he's made a career of smelling things.

A British man replicates an entire military band using his nose and mouth.