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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke July 20, 2023

Is this the oldest person ever? Only according to the fictitious website that first wrote about him

If Your Time is short

  • This claim originated on a website that published fictitious news stories. 
 

According to the Guinness World Records, the oldest living person is María Branyas Morera, who was closing in on 116 years in January. 

The oldest person ever, according to the recordkeeper, was Jeanne Louise Calment. She achieved "the greatest fully authenticated age to which any human has ever lived," Guinness said — 122 years and 164 days.

But a recent Facebook post suggests there’s another record-holder who has Calment beat. 

"He is the oldest man in the history of mankind!" the July 18 post says. "He worked until he was 122 years and is 181 years old." 

The post shows a photo of what looks like an older man and directs users to follow a link in the post’s comments to find out what he eats every day. 

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This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The link leads to a July 18 post on a website called Only-Faith. The post claims that "Guinness World Records recorded the oldest man who ever lived."

See above: We know that’s wrong. Guinness didn’t record the man — who the post says is named Mahashta Murasi — as the oldest man who ever lived. 

That’s because this is a longtime rumor originating on World News Daily Report, a website that published fictitious news stories. The story — and the site — appear to have since been deleted, but we’ve previously fact-checked other far-fetched claims that started there, including that a meth-addled babysitter ate the infant in her care.

Snopes looked into the claim in 2014, when Murasi was supposedly 179 years old. If that was true, he’d be almost 190 years old by now, not the 181 years this Instagram post claims. 

But it’s not true. 

We rate this claim False.

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Is this the oldest person ever? Only according to the fictitious website that first wrote about him

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