The story of Michel Lotito or "Monsieur Eat Everything" who ate the plane

They say that there is no dispute about tastes. Some people like gourmet dishes, while others practice a raw food diet. Frenchman Michel Latito had special gastronomic preferences. This man ate completely inedible and even unbearable things. He started with a glass glass and later ate computers, bicycles and household appliances. The strangest object that Latito digested was... a single-engine Cessna 150 aircraft.

Michel Lotito was born on June 15, 1950 in the French city of Grenoble. He learned about his supernatural abilities at the age of 9. One day the boy was drinking water and accidentally bit off a piece of the glass. He once heard that there are people who can digest glass. Michel chewed the fragment and swallowed it.

Almost immediately, Michel's parents found out about this, and the young experimenter was urgently taken to the hospital. The doctor examined the boy and found no injuries. He diagnosed Lotito with pica, also called an eating disorder.

Typically, people with this disorder eat chalk, their own hair, or soil. But little Michel showed more strange preferences. Lotito began to eat everything he could fit into his mouth or chew. School supplies, books, dishes and shoes were used. They tried to treat him, but they did not achieve success.

At the age of 16, Michel came to the realization that he was unique. After this, the Frenchman decided to use his passion to his advantage. First, he demonstrated his omnivorous behavior for a fee at school, then to his neighbors in the yard. Well, soon he started performing small shows at local parties.

Under the admiring glances of onlookers, Lotito ate plastic, wood and metal. He also allowed people to pinch themselves with pliers, stick darts into their backs, and burn their fingers with matches. The young man’s strange performances were popular, and he began to think about a real artistic career.

The Americans, eager for all kinds of freak shows, were delighted with Lotito. Michel gave several performances a week, consuming on average about 1 kg of inorganic substances during each. Objects that could not be chewed, the Frenchman sawed into small pieces with a chainsaw and swallowed. Beforehand, to avoid choking, he poured a little mineral oil down his throat. The showman washed down each piece with plenty of water, like a big pill.

In an interview with journalists, Michel said that he did not experience any painful sensations. Everything he swallowed, sorry for the details, successfully comes out naturally. At the beginning of his career, Lotito was often interested in doctors. But they could not find any abnormal features of his digestive tract.

In the 1970s, an artist earned approximately $1,000 per performance. Taking into account inflation today this amount would be 10 times higher. In 1979, Michel first appeared on the pages of the Guinness Book of Records. To do this, he ate a bicycle, and in an amazingly short time - in just 15 days. That time, the only thing he didn’t master was the chain and pedals, which he called “tasteless.”

Just a year later, he improved the record and ate the bike with pedals in just 12 days. Additionally, instead of a side dish, he consumed a hundred razor blades, two porcelain plates and a glass glass. In 1980, Michel received for one performance an amount equivalent to modern 25 thousand dollars.

Actively touring the world with his show, Lotito in between was implementing a “major project.” From 1978 to 1980, it gradually ate up the single-engine Cessna 150 aircraft. This achievement was also included in the Book of Records. Michel later reported that, in general, eating the aircraft did not cause him any trouble. Only the tires turned out to taste unusually bad.

In total, Lotito ate approximately 9 tons of metal during his career. These were a variety of things: an airplane, bicycles, shopping carts and even a bronze plaque confirming one of his records. When Michel became a world celebrity, doctors again studied him in detail.

Yes, years of strange nutrition could not help but leave their mark on the Frenchman’s organs. It turned out that the walls of his stomach were twice as thick as normal. In addition, the teeth showed incredible hardness, although they were seriously worn out. Lotito himself was not averse to lying, and sometimes he clearly “went too far”:

Scientists did not find any phenomenal features in Michel, except for the consequences of eating hard, inedible materials. His personal doctor believed that the matter was not in the structure of the organs, but in an ordinary mental disorder. Instead of treating his illness, Michel nurtured it and turned it into a tool for making a solid income.

There are many photographs in which the Frenchman with a brutal expression on his face chews on clutch discs, wrenches, and an airplane wing. Of course, they are all staged. Lotito had to cut things into small pieces so that they could be swallowed.

He was nicknamed “Monsieur Eat Everything,” but many believed that Michel was simply a skilled hoaxer. He may have passed much less than 9 tons of metal through his stomach. Someone even claimed that eating an airplane was a lie and that all the trickster could do was eat a few pieces of crushed iron during the performance. But all the same, Lotito was a unique person and so far no one has managed to surpass him.

Michel Lotito died on June 25, 2007 at the age of 57. No, he didn’t get poisoned by another airplane tire or choke on a jack. The cause of death of this amazing man was an ordinary heart attack.