SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -
The oldest man in the world is from Puerto Rico, the Guinness Book of World Records has reported. Emiliano Mercado del Toro officially became the world's oldest living man last Monday, at the age of 113 years, 149 days.

He was born Aug. 21, 1891, in Cabo Rojo, on the southwest tip of this U.S. Caribbean territory. Mercado now lives in Isabela on the island's northwest coast.

He is also the oldest living veteran, London-based Guinness said. He didn't see action because, called up in 1918, he was two months into U.S. Army training when World War I ended Nov. 11, 1918.

Mercado was born while Puerto Rico was still part of the Spanish empire and lived through the transition after U.S. troops seized the Caribbean island in 1898 following the Spanish-American War.

He was born the same year Thomas Edison patented the radio, an earthquake killed 25,000 people in Japan, and U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) Chief Justice Earl Warren, songwriter Cole Porter, Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, and writer Henry Miller were born.

Mercado replaces Fred Hale Sr., who had been the world's oldest man. Hale, from the United States, died in his sleep on Nov. 19. He was 113 years old.

Guinness had recognized another Puerto Rican as being the world's oldest living person. Ramona Trinidad Iglesias Jordan died May 29 after a bout with pneumonia in a nursing home in Rio Piedras, a San Juan suburb. She was 114.