GETTY IMAGES
To look at his weathered, leathery skin, it is obvious that this Chippewa man from Minnesota, US, lived to a ripe old age. But 137? That is the age John Smith had supposedly reached when he died in 1922. His gravestone at Cass Lake – where he spent nearly all of his life – gives Smith’s year of birth as 1784, while his obituary in The Star Tribune claimed he could clearly remember 18th-century battles between the Chippewa and Sioux, and the War of 1812. As you might imagine, Smith’s extraordinary age has been questioned. Paul Buffalo knew John Smith and has stated that Smith had said he was between seven and ten when “the stars fell”, a possible reference to the Leonid meteor shower of 1833. If true, this would have made him almost 100 when he died.