The Michigan Man That Could Smoke With His Eye

Before we get to this guy, let me start with this.

There have been mentions of this guy in the press ever since the 1940s. SO many times, whoever the reporter or journalist was who wrote about him used the crutch of implementing the title of the 1933 song Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Well, I’m not gonna jump on that particular bandwagon and do that, but I figured I better at least mention it, or else someone reading this will ask, “How come you didn’t use the line ‘smoke gets in your eye’? Ha ha!”

That’s exactly why. Now to continue...

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Alfred Langevin could smoke through his eye. Pipe, cigarette, cigar, whatever. He could also use his eye to blow up balloons and play instruments.

Alfred was living in Detroit during the 1930s. He was featured a few times in the Sunday comics feature ‘Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not' and was coaxed by Ripley to appear at the Odditorium, Ripley’s showcase of oddities and freaks from 1933 to 1940.

What was the trick? No trick.

Both of Alfred’s eyes worked just fine. At the time, specialists couldn’t figure out how he could accomplish these feats, but it is currently believed that there was some kind of mutation in his tear gland. Others are afflicted with this same feature, prompting the Guinness Book of World Records to mark the record of “squirting milk from the eye”. The record holder is Mike Moraal of Canada, who squirted milk out of his eye in a distance of over eight feet in 2001.

Alfred Langevin was born in 1886 and passed away in February 1974 at the age of 87. He is buried in Quebec, Canada.