111-year-old Italian man crowned world's oldest man

A 111-year-old Italian has been crowned the world's oldest living man by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Arturo Licata, from Enna, Sicily, has been awarded the title after officials checked his birth papers and marriage records.

The Italian has been declared the world's oldest living man after reaching the age of 111 years and 302 days on Friday, The Mirror reported.

The world's oldest living person is a woman named Misao Okawa from Osaka, Japan, who was born on March 5, 1898.

Licata, born in Enna in May 1902, three months before Edward VII became king, he has joined an elite league of supercentenarians - people who have passed their 110th birthday.

He was one of four brothers and two sisters and went to work in sulphur mines in Sicily aged just nine.

He went on to work as a security guard and in a pharmacy where he would accompany children suffering form tuberculosis to hospital in Palermo.

Licata joined the Italian army in 1921 at the age of 19 and served for 18 years, including during the 1936 Italian invasion of Ethiopia. His military service finished just as World War Two began in 1939.

Licata's wife Rosa died in 1980 when he was 78 and the couple had seven children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Craig Glenday, Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief, said: "Signor Licata is the oldest of only three men alive today known to be over the age of 110 - compared with 65 women - so it's a privilege to be able to ratify him officially and include him in our book."

Licata was born in the same year the world's first cinema opened in Los Angeles and the world speed record set by a car was 74 mph.

The previous holder of the title, Salustiano 'Shorty' Sanchez, died in September last year aged 112 years 97 days.

The greatest authenticated age to which any human has ever lived is 122 years, 164 days by Jeanne Louise Calment of France, who died in 1997.