(This Footnote to History article was printed on page 4 of the December 8, 1949 edition of the Akron Beacon Journal, and is reprinted word-for-word below.)

Nose Knows A Good Thing

LOS ANGELES (AP) John B. Bidegain won a new career by a nose. The 36-year-old Frenchman lost his nose in 1942 while lighting a gasoline stove. It exploded, searing his face.

Bidegain couldn’t get a job after leaving the hospital. He entered Los Angeles county’s Rancho Los Amigos as an indigent.

“Why don’t you make yourself a nose?” the manager of the rehabilitation workshop asked him.

Bidegain made a plaster of paris cast of his face. He fashioned a nose of modeling clay.

By pouring polyvynyl choride, a flexible, nontoxic plastic into it, he got a new nose, a product of his own skill. He wears it proudly, touched up with cosmetics and held fast with spirit gum. Now Bidegain is fitting himself for a new job—plaster molding.