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Billy Crystal Once Tore a Rib Muscle by Doing This Simple Thing

Achoo! Billy Crystal stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday, July 17, and revealed the reason he was forced to cancel his scheduled appearance on the late-night show last month.

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Reflecting on the “weirdest injury ever,” the Comedians actor, 69, explained that he began to doze off while watching TV in June when he suddenly experienced a “violent” sneeze. “Folks, if it was a cartoon, my arms are flying off my body, my eyes are coming out of my head, people in the room are now naked because it blew their clothes off,” he quipped.

Billy Crystal Jimmy Kimmel Live
Billy Crystal on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

Despite feeling some slight pain after the earth-shattering sneeze, Crystal fell back asleep. Two hours later, he woke up and realized he was having trouble breathing.

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“What I did [was] I tore a rib muscle from sneezing, and I literally could not breathe,” he said. “It’s not an injury that you want to brag about. I didn’t rescue a woman out of a burning car. I didn’t catch an orphan falling out of a burning orphanage. No, I sneezed.”

Billy Crystal and Jimmy Kimmel
Billy Crystal on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’

In the Emmy winner’s defense, he suffers from severe allergies. In fact, he’s been allergic to chocolate since he was a young child. “I once sneezed 58 times before my nose started bleeding,” Crystal said during Monday’s interview before calling his sneezes “wild” and “orgasmic.”

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Another time, when Crystal was a college student at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, his roommate and friends began betting on how many sneezes he’d let out. “Finally, we get to 63 sneezes … and I made $250,” he recounted.

Jimmy Kimmel Live airs on ABC weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET.

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