Goodbye 1800’s

| November 18, 2013 | 0 Comments

By: Valerie Bolanos

 

Goodbye 1800’s

By: Valerie Bolanos

The average for a human to live is 70 to 80 years old. Jiroemon Kimura, the oldest person in the world and the oldest man in history, has died of natural causes at the age of 116 years and 54 days in hospital in Kyotango, Japan. Kimura’s death means there are no longer any living men who were born before 1900.Kimura was born on 19 April 1897, and had seven children, 14 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and 15 great-great-grandchildren. Here are five things you might not know about him.

Jiroemon Kimura was the third of six children, five of whom lived to the age of 90. After working in Korea in the 1920s he returned to Japan and married his neighbor, Yae Kimura. Because her family had no male men, he took her name.  Kimiura spent his career working in local post offices and after 45 years in the job retired at the age of 65. After stopping work, he took up farming and kept it up until he was 90. In 2009, the Associate Press reported “He rises early, reads a newspaper every morning with a magnifying glass, enjoys talking to guests, and closely follows parliamentary debate on live TV broadcasts.

In an interview on his 115th birthday, Kimura said he was not sure why he had lived so long. “Maybe it’s all thanks to the sun above me,” he said. Last year a nephew put his longevity down to “an amazingly strong will to live” and the fact that he lived “right and well”. Another relative said it was thanks to “his positivity”. But a journalist who interviewed him told the BBC that he put it down to eating light meals and he never smoked.

JIroemon Kimura had the will and strength to live 116 years old. Although he is now deceased, he still was the last man to live in the 1800’s. There are about 90 citizens in Japan that are above 100 years old, but they were born in the 20th century. The 19th century is gone but the inspiration  and footprints of Jiroemon Kimura still lie within the Earth.

 

 

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Category: Arts & Entertainment, Features, Front Page

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