Masazo Nonaka’s passing comes shortly after controversial claims came out about the oldest female super-centenarian — that’s the term for a person who exceeds 110 years of age — that’s ever lived. Jeanne Louise Calment, who hailed from Arles, France, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest woman that’s ever lived.
Calment, who passed away in 1997 at 122, made history for accomplishing her feat of longevity. However, besides being the oldest documented person who’s ever lived, she made headlines recently because some researchers purported that she lied about her age.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that researcher Nikolay Zak believes the woman that laid claim to the record was actually Yvonne Calment, Jeanne Louise Calment’s daughter. If the claims are true, that would make her a fraud, and would also have made her 99 years old when she died.
Nikolay Zak, of the Moscow Centre For Continuous Mathematical Education, believes Jeanne Louise Calment assumed her mother’s identity to avoid paying inheritance taxes in the 1930s. He documented that reason — among others — for why he believed she was not 122 at the time of her death.
The Inquisitr reported last April that Masazo Nonaka had taken the distinction of being the world’s oldest man from 113-year-old Francisco Nunez Olivera, who died shortly after his birthday in February 2018. Interestingly enough, Masazo Nonaka doesn’t hold the record for being the oldest living man ever. The oldest super-centenarian hailed from Japan as well, and he was 116-years-old when he died in 2013.
Masazo Nonaka was born July 25, 1905, during the Theodore Roosevelt administration. This was the same year when Albert Einstein famously released his theory of relativity to the public.As the Inquisitr detailed at the time,“Mr. Nonaka has lived through four Japanese emperors, 20 U.S. presidents, 10 Popes, five British monarchs, two world wars, and two instances of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.”
Nonaka began his life as a farmer, and then he later worked as a lumberjack. After plying his trade as a lumberjack, he then oversaw his family’s hot springs hotel, referred to as an “onsen ryokan.”
The hot springs facility is owned by his family to this day, and Masazo Nonaka frequently enjoyed taking a dip in its warm spas. Consequently, those relaxing baths were one of the keys to her grandfather’s longevity, Ms. Nonaka detailed. She additionally credited his long life to his stress-free way of living and the Japanese and Western tasty sweets he liked to eat at the end of meals. She said his favorite treat was strawberry sponge cake.
