Here is a story told at a Watford meeting this week. A man of 94 ordered a pair of boots to be made, particularly specifying that he wanted the best leather, so that the boots would last many years.

The bootmaker smilingly suggested that at his customer’s age, he was unlikely to require boots for many years ahead. “Well,” was the unexpected reply, “I have studied the statistics very carefully and I find that very few people die after the age of 94.”

[From the Watford Observer of October 28, 1938]