Jiroemon Kimura, we hardly knew ye!

Kimura once said of Steampunk:
"You're doing it wrong."

Sad day everybody, the planet has just lost Jiroemon Kimura, the world's oldest human. He was 116. Yes, years old. He was born in 1897. In addition to being the oldest living man (most centenarians are women) he was also one of only 22 people living today who were born in the 19th century. The nineteenth century, that's the century before the last century. You know, the sepia-tone one with all the mustaches and steam-powered cyborgs? Yeah, this guy was alive in three different centuries. That sound you just heard? That was your mind exploding.

Kimura credits his long life to exercise,
healthy diet and choosing the correct grail.

To put 116 years old into context, when Jiroemon Kimura was born there were no such things as airplanes or television and William Goddamn McKinley was President of the U.S. Kimura lived through the entire 20th century: two world wars, the founding and collapse of the Soviet Union, the sinking of the Titanic, the Spanish Flu, and being from Japan: 61 Prime Ministers, 4 Emperors, and 28 Godzilla movies. When he retired from the post office at age 65 in 1962 and became a farmer, nobody had ever walked on the moon, computers took up entire rooms and everyone wore hats, like all the time.

Kimura's passing leaves 115 year old Misao Okawa as the world's oldest living person and number one suspect. I'm not saying that she had anything to do with his death, I'm just saying that she's the only one with something to gain.

When asked where she was when Kimura died, Okawa just smiled,
whispered "there can be only one," turned and walked away.