Joint birthday celebration for world's oldest married couple

They tied the knot 88 years and 349 days ago on December 11,1925 after meeting in India as teenagers.

Karam Chand, aged 109, and his wife Kartari 102 were both born in November and have a combined age of 211.

The world's oldest married couple celebrated their joint birthdays recently and celebrated with four generations of their family at their home in Bradford recently.

They married the same year Margaret Thatcher was born and Stanley Baldwin was British prime minister.

Kartari said: 'We have always eaten good wholesome food, there's nothing artificial in our diet, things like butter, milk and yoghurt are what we like.

'We just get along with each other and we are family focused, its simple.'

Their son Paul, one of eight children, said: 'People are so impressed by my parents.They always ask me: "What do you eat? What are you feeding them and how do they stay so healthy?"

'I tell them: "If I knew that I would be eating the same thing myself".'

 He is king of his island

When someone establishes a kingdom he becomes the king and his family the royal family. This is what Renato Barros has done when he managed to set up his own country much closer to home. The 56-year-old Portuguese citizen purchased a small island on Funchal harbour, in Maderia, Portugal. He named it the Principality of the Pontinha, and anointed himself Prince Renato II.

Pontinha is actually just the size of a one-bedroom house, and has only four citizens - Barros, his wife, and his son and daughter. In addition to his Portuguese passport, Barros holds a passport for Pontinha with the number 0001. An art teacher by profession, he's also taken on the roles of policeman, gardener, caretaker, and member of the royal family of his very own country.

"I am whatever I want to be - that's the dream, isn't it," he said. "If I decide I want to have a national song, I can choose it, and I can change it any time. The same with my flag - it could be blue today, red tomorrow. Of course, my power is only absolute here, where I am the true sovereign." Barros got a chance to buy the island fourteen years ago, when it was owned by a wealthy British family who wanted to sell it for 25,000 Euros ($31,000), because it was of no use to them. Nobody wanted to buy it, but when Barros heard of the opportunity at a party, he decided that it was just the thing for him. There was only one snag - he didn't have the money.

Barros tried to find business partners, but they all thought he was crazy to want to spend so much money on what was essentially a large rock - with a cave, a platform, no electricity and no running water. So he ended up selling several of his possessions, pooled in all of his savings, and bought the place for himself. Naturally, his wife, family and friends all thought he'd lost his mind. But he was confident of his purchase because he knew it would give him what he wanted - uninhibited freedom. "When the King of Portugal originally sold the island in 1903, he and all the governors signed a document, selling all the "possessions and the dominions" of the island," Barros explained.

"It means I can do what I want with it - I could start a restaurant, or a cinema, but nobody thought that someone would want to start a country. So that's what I did: I decided that this would no longer be just a rocky outcrop on the port of Funchal, it would be my island, about the size of a one-bedroom house."

After he bought the rock, Barros made a diplomatic visit to the governor of Madeira, introducing himself as the ruler of the neighbouring state.

In response, the governor threatened to refuse him electricity unless he sold the island back to the state. Barros wasn't interested in the offer, so he simply set up a solar panel and a small windmill to generate his own electricity.

"Maybe in the future I'll be able to generate power from the ocean around Pontinha," he said. "I'm a pacifist, and I don't need any money." Although he hasn't received official rights of a country, the case of Pontinha is being reviewed by the international community, including the Portuguese government and the United Nations. Prince Renato is quite confident that his request would be approved because there isn't a good reason to refuse him. He points out that he has good relations with the Brazilian Government and if the Principality shall be recognised, it will be a door of entry to Europe.

Eight-year-old human calendar

You ask him details about any future date upto 2068 he'll give you the answer within seconds.

Ask eight-year-old Aryan Parab a few questions about future dates and you'll realise that he's actually a mathematical genius with superhuman computational skills. The boy can work out the day on which any date falls, up to the year 2068, within seconds - faster than his friends can open their iPhone calendars!

Aryan who lives in Mumbai discovered his unique skill earlier this year when he was talking about birthdays and found that he could accurately predict the days of his friends' birthdays several years into the future. His unique talent has now made him popular as a child prodigy and he regularly entertains audiences with his precise predictions.

"Aryan prepares an entire years' calendar within 20-25 minutes without using any reference material or glancing at the internet," his grandfather Suryakant Bhosle said.

Aryan also has found out that calendars tend to repeat every 11 years; so he says that a birthday (or any day) will fall on the same day as it did 11 years before. So he probably has 11 years' worth of calendars memorised, and he can compute dates at lighting speed, instantly providing answers to calendar-related questions.

In fact, Aryan's memory is so razor sharp that he remembers the birthday of every single person he's met. "He is a ready reckoner of dates, particularly those related to national leaders and national events. He remembers the birthdays of every single classmate, relative, friend and neighbour," his mother Rupali Parab said. "The other day he pestered me to greet a casual acquaintance over the phone, and I yielded. She was so happy I remembered her birthday that we struck a bond over that conversation."

But Rupali jokingly said that the negative side of Aryan's talent was that her telephone bill was going through the roof because he keeps reminding her every day when somebody has a birthday and gets her to call them,