The man who held the Guinness World Record of being the oldest man in the world has passed away Friday, at a Grand Island nursing home. He was 112 years old.
Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez was born in El Tejado de Bejar, Spain in 1901, where he had initially been a musician, and worked as a sugarcane worker in Cuba with a brother and some friends at 17, before moving to the United States in 1920 where he subsequently entered work as a coal miner. He settled down at the Niagara Falls area of New York where he met and married his wife Pearl, in 1934. He had been a self-taught musician, and was said to have loved gin rummy. He accounted his longevity as being helped by eating one banana per day and downing six Anacin tablets daily (his daughter jokingly disputed this theory, saying it was simply because he had been "an independent, stubborn man.") He is survived by another son, seven grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren.
He was preceded as Oldest Man in The World by Jiroemon Kimura, who died at the age of 116. Currently, the oldest known person is Misao Okawa, who is 115 years old.
The oldest recorder person (with the paper records to prove it) was Jean-Louise Calment from France, who died in 1997 at the age of 122.
But the a man claims that he is the world's oldest living man; retired Ethiopian farmer Dhaqabo Ebba has said that he had lived through the time when Italy had invaded his country, which would make him around 160 years old. An alarming claim, to be sure, but Ebba has clear memories about the invasion, remembering that he had a son who had been old enough to help him with farming, and recounting the 8-day long horseback ride that presently takes only a handful of hours.
Unfortunately, Ebba has grown up in an oral society, without no use for physical documentation, and no living witnesses to back his claim.
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