On the Internet you can find publications about an American who lived not so long ago, who weighed about 1140 kg. Some even call him the fattest man in history. We have verified the authenticity of this fact.

In the publication of the online magazine “Women’s View” is toldthat one Buster Simkus from Dallas weighed 1141 kg. One day he decided to lose weight, and with the help of nutritionists he managed to “lose several hundred kilograms,” but in 1995 Simkus “returned to his usual lifestyle” and died ten years later. Publications dedicated to this American also appeared in several publics on VKontakte, and in some of them Simkus surpassed his own record, gaining weight up to 1600 kg, and in others he even survived to this day. Very contradictory information about Simkus can be found in other sources writing about him - from Instagram to "Entertaining encyclopedia of man", from LiveJournal to the ranking of the fattest people on the planet from the Ukrainian TV channel STB.

The logical place to start looking for information about a person with incredible weight is the Guinness Book of Records. However, its compilers, apparently, know nothing about Simkus. Heaviest man in history Guinness Book of Records calls John Brower Minnock. In 1978, a 36-year-old American man, who had been obese since childhood, was admitted to the hospital, where doctors estimated his weight at 635 kg. Over the next two years, Minnock managed to lose two-thirds of his weight, but then he began to gain weight again, and on the day of his death in 1983 he weighed 362 kg.

Although Simkus is not mentioned in reputable media, there is one publication that wrote about him with enviable regularity. It's called Weekly World News and, judging by the Google Books archive, from 1995 to 2004 dedicated the incredibly fat man has at least 15 publications. The first of them appeared in January 1995, and already in October Weekly World News toldthat Simkus, who weighed 2,513 pounds (about 1,140 kg), managed to lose weight to 212 pounds (about 96 kg). Because of this, the hero of the publication faced a problem - it was necessary to remove kilograms of excess skin. Then the publication published texts about how Simkus again became dial weight and reached a mass of 4007 pounds (about 1820 kg) in 2000 got married on a completely ordinary girl, and in 2002 got ready selling parts of his body for advertising and jumping from a blimp onto a football field at halftime of the Super Bowl.

On the Weekly World News website in the “About Us” section it saysthat it is “the only reliable news in the world.” The editors of the publication report that they offer “investigative journalism of the highest level,” and issues have been published since 1683. The section also argues that reporters tell stories every day that the established media ignores, and a loyal reader of the Weekly World News was Albert Einstein, who liked to read the tabloid while cycling. The “About Us” section ends with the following paragraph: “Weekly World News is available exclusively on the Internet and social media. But we are working hard to get back into print soon. Government agencies are always conspiring to stop us from sharing our stories. But rest assured, we will never let anyone stop us from telling our readers the truth!”

Actually edition appeared not so long ago - in 1979 in Florida. Weekly World News was created by media mogul Generoso Pope Jr. when his flagship tabloid, The National Requirer, switched from black-and-white to color. The equipment left behind prompted Pope Jr. to launch a new publication in the “old style.” To closing in 2007, the most incredible publications: about Elvis Presley actually being alive and planning to run for president of the United States, about the “smartest chimpanzee” and his plans to go to college, or about Hillary Clinton adopting an alien. At the peak of popularity, circulation of one issue exceeded 1 million copies. In 2009, Weekly World News was restarted on the Internet - it turns out that the publication has been “working hard” for 12 years to return the printed version.

In addition to one-time publications about the stars of American politics and pop culture, in a sense, the progenitor of the popular news agency Panorama in Russia also had permanent characters. One of them is Batboy, half boy and half bat, who was found in a cave in West Virginia. The authors of the publication paid considerable attention to aliens and mutants of all stripes. Often the heroes of the notes were people and animals of incredible size - the fattest cat in the world, Tonya, several of the fattest women in the world, and, finally, Buster Simkus. It is not surprising that all the images associated with this fictional person are publications in the Weekly World News and photographs of wax dolls based on them.