It happened again: The world’s oldest man has died. This time, it was 112-year-old upstate New York resident Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez. His time as the planet’s most senior male citizen was brief — he only took over the job in June, after Japan’s 116-year-old Jiroemon Kimura ended his run. Before Sanchez-Blazquez became the world’s oldest man, he was a child in Spain, a teenage cane field worker in Cuba, a coal miner in Kentucky, a construction and furnace guy in the Niagara Falls area, and, finally, a retiree and nursing home resident.
But his 69-year-old daughter, Irene Johnson, told Guinness World Records that he didn’t let his last title go to his head. “He says, ‘I’m an old man and let’s leave it at that,’” she said at the beginning of the summer. While Sanchez-Blazquez attributed his longevity to a daily habit of eating a banana and taking six Anacins, Johnson speculated that he survived as long as he did “just because he’s an independent, stubborn man.” According to Guinness, 90 percent of people who make it past their 110th birthday are women, so it does seem that there’s some truth to her theory.
