Buster's Claim Doesn't Pass Muster

If 101-year-old runner Pierre "Buster" Martin reaches the finish line tomorrow in London, he would be the oldest person ever to complete a marathon. Assuming he really is 101.

Guinness officials said Friday that they did not consider Martin eligible for the record because he had never provided proof that he is 101.

A review by The Times of the documents Martin offered as proof of his age reveals that none were obtained with anything more than his own assertion that he was born Sept. 1, 1906, in France. The certificate of naturalization he provided was issued by the Home Office on Friday, based on an application made Thursday, when The Times first made inquiries.

"At the very least, there's no birth certificate. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors," said Robert Young, an independent senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records, though he was not speaking on behalf of the organization. Young said his sources had told him that Martin had two birth dates registered with the government: Sept. 1, 1906, and Sept. 1, 1913, which would make him 94. [Link]

I Would Also Leap to That Conclusion

Florence Beatrice Stevens, born on February 29, 1904, has celebrated only 25 birthdays. Could she be the oldest living person born on a leap year day? Beverly (Mass.) Historical Society & Museum director Stephen P. Hall was put on the case.

I had to give this question some thought, because whenever you assign any “superlative” to a person you want to be on a strong footing. But the more I thought about it, to be an older “leap-year day” baby you would have to be at least 108 years old, (a very small percentage of the population) and also be born on the 29th of February 1900. The odds of someone still alive in 2008 and being born on leap year day 108 years ago are astronomical. [Link]

A Long-Lived Levantine Lady

Mariam Amash may be a dark horse candidate for world's oldest person.

Amash, who recently applied for a new Israeli identity card, said she was born 120 years ago — a claim, if confirmed, that would make her the oldest person in the world. The Guinness Book of Records currently lists 114-year-old Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Ind., as holding that title.

Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for Israel's Interior Ministry, confirmed that Amash, from the Israeli Arab village of Jisr a-Zarka, is listed in the population registry as having been born in 1888. "We're just not sure it's correct," Haddad said. [Link]

[Thanks to John Van Essen for tipping me off to this story.]

Average Age of Kiwis Goes Up

Eric King-Turner, 102, has moved from Britain to New Zealand—his wife's homeland—making him that country's oldest immigrant.

"It's a wonderful new adventure and I would say to anyone that if you want to do something you should do it straight away while you can. What's important is that when I'm 105 I don't want to be thinking 'I wish I had moved to the other side of the world when I was 102'."

Mrs King-Turner met her husband, both widowed, while researching her ancestry. Despite sharing the same last name they were not related but decided to meet anyway. [Link]

Sure, you let one of them in, and then another, and pretty soon the whole damn country is overrun by centenarians.

An Army of One

With the death on Monday of Harry Richard Landis, the last surviving American World War I veteran is Frank Buckles, 107, of West Virginia.

In addition, John Babcock of Spokane, Washington, 107, served in the Canadian army and is the last known Canadian veteran of the war.

Another World War I vet, Ohioan J. Russell Coffey, died in December at 109. The last known German World War I veteran, Erich Kaestner, died New Year's Day at 107. [Link]

Don't Tell Mrs. Hoover

This item appeared Wednesday in a Florida newspaper:

Daisy Garlock, a direct descendant of President Herbert Hoover, was joined by relatives, friends and fellow Bay Village residents in a gala celebration of her 103rd birthday.

She was born Jan. 8, 1905, in Birmingham, Ala. into a family with four brothers and four sisters. In 1926 she graduated from Howard College (now Stanford University) with degrees in English and botany. [Link]

Hmm... According to every source I can find, Herbert Hoover had two sons (born 1903 and 1907) and no daughters. I don't think Daisy's even an indirect descendant of the guy.

And, by the way, Howard College is now Samford University—not Stanford, from which university (ironically) Herbert Hoover graduated in 1895.

He's Never Slept Around

One might think that, after a century, Douglas Mathews would be sick of waking in the same bedroom every day.

But 100 years after he was delivered there by a doctor who arrived on horseback on Jan 5 1908, the centenarian farmer and great-grandfather insists there really is no place like home.

During his childhood and teens he slept in the room in the village of Staverton in South Devon, shared it with his wife Mabel until her death in 1996, and on Saturday woke in it to celebrate his 100th birthday.

The father-of-two said: "I still sleep in the same bedroom where I was delivered. [Link]

Younger Sisters Aren't So Young

Louisiana's oldest resident is Maggie Renfro, who says she is 113. Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group says she is the 11th oldest person in the U.S., and the 21st oldest in the world.

Young said Census records for 1900 list Renfro as 4 years old, giving her birth date as November 1895, and the 1910 census puts her age at 14. That would make her 112.

The family is long-lived: her sisters also have passed the century mark.

Renfro, Rosie Warren, 101, and Carrie Lee Thornton, 105, are the world's oldest living sibling threesome, with 320 combined years, Young said. The all-time record is 327 combined years. [Link]

A Centenarian's Shocking Secret

Rose Elliot was ready to celebrate her 100th birthday on September 16, 1907.

But after her niece, Doreen McWhirter from north Belfast, checked her birth certificate, she discovered her aunt was actually born on September 28, 1905 - making her 102.

"It was a real shock," Mrs McWhirter said.

"The nursing home she lives in was all set for a big party and I had already bought her a 100th birthday card.

"I told them that we had a wee bit of a hiccup and explained about the birth certificate and her birthday being on the 28th. They were shocked, too." [Link]

A Smoking Centenarian

Winnie Langley celebrated her 100th birthday by leaning over her birthday cake and lighting up her (estimated) 170,000th cigarette.

The former launderette worker said she started the habit in 1914 - just weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28 - which sparked the First World War.

Despite the numerous health warnings, Mrs Langley insists she's never suffered because of the habit as she "has never inhaled". [Link, via Neatorama]

Serial Centenarians

Megan's very cool article about Serial Centenarians is up on the Ancestry Magazine website.

I received an e-mail with a conundrum I simply couldn’t resist. It focuses on an objective, rather than an object, but is otherwise much like the many other genealogical puzzles I wrestle. Plus, how could I not be intrigued by a query like this?

We would like to find out if there is anyone still alive in America who met a relative that was born in the 18th century. We figure this would take someone who is at least 100 years old and who had an ancestor who lived to be over 100. Hypothetically, it could be someone who was born in 1901 and who, in that same year, met a great-grandparent who was born in 1799.

You can watch the footage she mentions of the 1905 funeral of Hiram Cronk here.

It's Time for Him to Shove Off

Eric King-Turner and his wife are moving to New Zealand next January. At 102, he may be Britain's oldest emigrant.

Says Eric: "We not only had to produce a marriage certificate but we had to produce evidence that we were in a long and stable relationship!"

Eric says he was not asked about his age but had to show that he could support himself financially in New Zealand. [Link]

Old Notables and the Notably Old

Generians is a website that lists notable people aged 90 and up (once you gain supercentenarian status you're notable just for breathing). It's not quite as fun as Dead or Alive? or Who's Alive and Who's Dead, but it does offer some neat info. For instance, did you know that the United States' oldest man and Great Britain's oldest man were born on the very same day (June 6, 1896)? Hurry and impress your friends with that bit of trivia while it's still true.

[via Neatorama]

A November-December Romance

This item appeared in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly in 1888, written by someone who never knew the love of an 80-year-old woman.

A CURIOUS MARRIAGE ENTRY

The Rev. Brooks Lambert, the Vicar of Greenwich, has disinterred and sent to the London Times a very curious entry in the marriage registers of St. Alphage, Greenwich, under the date November 18th, 1685 :— "John Cooper, of this parish, almsman in Queen Elizabeth's College, aged one hundred and eight years, and Margaret Thomas, of Charlton, in Kent, aged eighty years, by license of ye Lord Bishop of Rochester and leave of ye Governors of ye Draipers' Company."

This marriage must, we should think, have been got up by others than the parties themselves, as a vulgar sort of joke. Even if the ages be a little exaggerated, no sane people of that age would have entered into a tie of this kind on the very brink of the grave. Since the age of Methuselah, there can scarcely have been any such marriage.

Centenarian Not as Old as She'd Thought

Upon inspection of her birth certificate, a 100-year-old woman in Wales has learned that she blew out her birthday candles on the wrong day for 99 years.

Nellie Davies, who has no idea how the mix-up happened, said: "I couldn't believe it. Who'd have thought all these years I'd been celebrating the wrong day?"

Ever since Nellie was a child she had been celebrating her birthday on May 2 but that has changed since a relative noticed the birthdate was May 24. It was in-fact 22 days later in 1907 Mrs. Davies was born. [Link]

We had a similar situation in my own family. My grandmother always celebrated her birthday on November 18, but her official birth record gives the date as November 9. The family record I shared here gives the November 18 date, with the time and day of the week written by another hand. In this case, the official record is almost certainly wrong—perhaps the product of a country doctor with poor penmanship.

So maybe Nellie was celebrating the right birthday all along.

His Persistence Paid Off

Here's a family that'll cause your genealogy software to pitch a conniption fit.

After confessing to him that she was still in love, an elderly Mexican woman aged 91 years said "Yes" to her 98-year-old boyfriend - with whom she has lived for 70 years and has 42 great-great-grandchildren - and the pair finally wed last June 2 in Guanajuato in the center of Mexico. [Link]

The Oldest Person Ever?

Neatorama has an English translation of a YouTubed interview with Sarhat Rashidova—a woman who died in January at the reported age of 131 years.

The proof for this is her passport, which shows the date of birth of 1875. Locals found this fact out during a passport exchange [...], but they believed it only after their own investigation.

Update: Nope, this guy in India is the oldest person ever.

According to Habib Miyan's relatives, he was born on May 20, 1871, at Rajgarh in Alwar district of Rajasthan. But there is no official record to establish his age.

He Finally Kicked the KFC Bucket

Emma Carroll says she's lived to be 112 through "Good clean living and hard work." Fellow Iowan Edward Harlam, who died in 1997 at 117, had a different approach.

Harlam said he came to the United States in 1911 and was kicked off a boxcar at Columbus Junction in 1916. Harlam claimed that he stole cars for legendary mobster Al Capone, fathered a son at 84, and fought in World War I. He celebrated his birthday with a non-filtered Camel and some Kentucky Fried Chicken. [Link]

She Didn't Look a Day Over 1.5 Million

According to her death certificate, a woman in Malaysia was 1,996,964 years old when she died in 1998.

An entry for the Guinness Book? Not quite.

The Ipoh woman was actually 39 at the time of her death, but a 'technical error' resulted in the entry on her certificate, reported Malaysian daily China Press. [Link]

Tamale Suspected in Woman's Death

A 128-year-old woman was buried Friday in El Salvador.

Cruz Hernandez, who national birth records show was born on May 3, 1878, in central El Salvador, passed away in her sleep on Thursday, neighbour and close family friend Margarita Ascencio said by telephone. Hernandez died without being recognized by the Guinness Book of Records.

"She had been poorly for a few days, and yesterday, after eating a tamale and drinking some milk, she went to sleep and never woke up," Ascencio said.

Many who knew her attributed her longevity to her favourite drink of a beer with two raw eggs in it. [Link]

Her diet was strangely similar to that of this woman. I need to eat more eggs and drink more booze.