Mihailio Totolo died at 82 years old
A man who was adopted and raised by Orthodox Monks in Greece unbelievably spent almost his entire life on Earth without setting eyes on a woman.
Imagine going your whole life without seeing or interacting with the opposite gender.
While it may seem like a dystopian nightmare for some, for Mihailio Totolos, it was his everyday life and he unfortunately knew nothing else.
Totolos, who hailed from Halkidiki, Greece, was only aware that women existed due to conversations with his peers and descriptions in books.
It’s understood that while the monk was welcomed into the world at some point in 1856, he never knew his mother.
She died shortly after giving birth to him, leaving him orphaned and without any immediate family.
Following his mother’s death, Tolotos was adopted by a Grecian-based group of Orthodox Monks and taken to a monastery on Mount Athos.
During his years occupying the building, he was asked to live by the strict rules.
One of these was that under no conditions were women allowed on the premises.
Apparently, the rule had been in place for hundreds of years and although Tolotos was free to venture into the wider world, it’s said the man never left the monastery.
This meant he never actually saw a woman in real life. Instead, he learned everything from text books and conversations.
He was also left to imagine what approximately half of the world’s population looked, sounded and acted like – which is a wild thought.
Seemingly never curious about what lay outside of the monastery, Tolotos went on with his life until 1938, when he died, aged 82.
Following his death, Tolotos was honored with a special burial by the monks who lived at Mount Athos with him.
They believed the deceased was the only man in the world to have died without knowing what a woman looked like.
Tolotos’ death was later recognized in a newspaper article, which noted that women weren’t the only sight Tolotos had been deprived of throughout his life.
They claimed that the man had also gone 82 years without riding in a car, watching a movie on the silver screen or even seeing an aeroplane.
Of course – given the digital revolution and the modern-day tech book – there will likely never be a man like Mihailo Tolotos to grace the Earth again.
What a strange thought.
