Oldest Man Alive - Born in 1896

[Forty Two]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... n-probably

If only he could be spoken to. What are his memories of historical events? He would have been 18 when World War 1 broke out.... amazing.

When were his parents born?

I wonder if the age is accurate.

[NineBerry]

So, they found Hitler alive after all.

[Sean Hayden]

He doesn't look a day over ~93.

[JimC]

My Dad was born in 1901 in England, and came to Oz as a young boy. He was in his 50s when I was born...

Had a very adventurous life between the wars, including riding a motorcycle all around Europe for 6 months, and working in what was Tanganyika...

[Dworkin]

Folks,

He doesn't look too well to me. There is something that happens with the eyes in geriatrics. Its a kind of emptiness that comes over the person, quite quickly once the process starts.

I used to think that ageing was linear, like your the same through life and then you get ill and die. But it is more like the changes in youth, in reverse.

I'll find out soon enough; I'm 70 this year and beginning to feel the chill a little.

D.

[JimC]

I'm coming up to 65, and retiring at the end of this year, D.

Going to fit in as much travel around Oz as I can in the next 5 years. Both mum and dad made it to their late 80s, so I ought to have a while yet...

[Forty Two]

My Dad was born in 1901 in England, and came to Oz as a young boy. He was in his 50s when I was born...

Had a very adventurous life between the wars, including riding a motorcycle all around Europe for 6 months, and working in what was Tanganyika...

That does sound adventurous!

I always find it interesting to contemplate. Your grandfather was born solidly within the 19th century. Yet, sometimes we tend to think of people that lived then as radically different from us, mainly because they look different and lived so different, to us so backwards. Your grandfather's grandfather may have been born in the 18th century.

It's interesting to imagine their thoughts on life back then, not being privy to the advances of the last 200 years. Things would not have felt or seemed backward to them. They would have seemed normal, comfortable, the way it's supposed to be. A view of our world today would seem to them magical, scary maybe.

Yet, if we could be transported back to them, they would be as alert and sharp as we, and of course, sometimes moreso, referring to the more intelligent folks.

...just a weird thought I sometimes try to wrap my mind around - not even clear what I'm trying to wrap my mind around - sort of trying to understand the difference in perspective which is impossible to understand. Like trying to imagine what it would be like to be deaf, or trying to imagine what it's like to have one more sense which we don't have.

[NineBerry]

Just imagine that even for us, the world was totally different just 20 years ago. No internet, no smartphones. I totally strange world. I cannot imagine life in the world of 20 years ago, although I did.

[cronus]

Ageing is genetic. Had a uncle live into his nineties, but he smoked all his life. If you can manage without many people, that's a great sign since all your peers are gonna have pegged it in old, old age.

[JimC]

Certainly the technology has changed incredibly from when I was at Uni, over 40 years ago. To do a statistical analysis of the data in my research project, I punched cards, and presented them to the acolytes of the mainframe in their lab coats, and picked up the roll of dot-matrix printing a week later...

[NineBerry]

It's like this:

We did not have smart phones, not even normal mobile phones 20 years ago, yet we still somehow managed to make appointments on the go or find places we had never been before. I cannot even try to understand how that worked back then.

[Svartalf]

I can, I'm an irrecuperable luddite who refuses to be chained by a phone

[JimC]

I have a "non-smart" phone which I hardly ever use, it's simply for emergencies only...

[Brian Peacock]

What's your number - I can send you a selfie of me in my onesie if you like.

[JimC]

That doesn't count as an emergency...