10 Things Younger Than Juan Ponce Enrile

Here's an inflated Top Things Younger than JPE, my contribution originally featured in the 8List.ph website. You can check it out at: http://8list.ph/site/articles/8-things-younger-than-senator-juan-ponce-enrile-161.html

Age is a relative thing. Some people look and ‘seem old’ than their actual younger age. But some exceptional people, like Senator Juan Ponce Enrile who’s about to turn 89 this Valentine’s Day, are still exuberant and continue to shape history up to this day.

Forty years after Martial Law, this Cagayano ‘political survivor’ seems to go against the laws of longevity. JPE is at an age where his compatriots are already six feet under. And for a little disclaimer: I don’t hate old people.

This is a list that salutes to this longevous senator who wants nothing but for us to be “happy”. Well, here it is:

10. Discovery of Pluto

The planetary body counted as the ninth planet in the solar system was discovered in 1930. Clearly, when JPE was in primary school, the planetary body farthest from the Sun is Neptune.The Senate President was already in the universe when the planet Pluto was yet to be written on the astronomy textbooks.

9. Israel

After the UN partitions Palestine, the Jewish Agency executive committee declared the independent state of Israel. Arab states led by Egypt and Transjordan declared war but Israel wins its war for independence in 1948. Manong Johnny was already a young man when all this took place. Again, JPE is older than the state of Israel. That’s how old he is.

 

8. Larry King

JPE is already a nine-year-old Cagayano when the CNN legendary talkshow host was born. If you think Larry King’s been alive for like, forever, that sure made you scratch your head whether Senator Enrile is indeed, immortal.

7. Hindenburg Disaster

A stiff airship, the Hindenburg was one of the largest airships ever built which measured 245 m (804 ft) long. On a very shocking fashion captured on film, The Hindenburg ignited and burned on May 6, 1937, just before landing in New Jersey killing thirty-six people were killed. Little Johnny’s already an adolescent hippy-hopping the shores of Gonzaga, Cagayan.

6. Ball-point Pen

It wasn’t until 1938 that a Hungarian brothers Georg and Ladislao Biro solved the flow problems that were plaguing their predecessors and had his smudge-free name written in the chronicles of pen history. Our Senate President from the school of hard knocks, in fact, used not ball-point pens but fountain pens back in the day.

5. Penicillin

The action of natural penicillin was first observed in 1928 by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, but another ten years passed before it was studied by others. Finally, in 1942, when JPE was presumably an unvaccinated eighteen-year-old, John Bumstead and Orvan Hess became the first physicians in the world to successfully treat a patient using penicillin.

4. Chocolate Chip Cookies

Apparently, the chocolate chip cookie has not been around since the dawn of time. It was, in fact, invented in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield of Whitman, Massachusetts, who ran the Toll House restaurant. Guess who’s older than them chocolate cookies.

Hint: It rhymes with Wan Bonse Enrime.

3. Communism in the Philippines

Formally established in 1930, it is now often called “PKP-1930” to separate it from its far more known splinter-group, the Communist Party of the Philippines. Enrile was a young boy back then when the original Reds, led by Crisanto Evangelista, were raising their left hands at the backdrop of the hammer and sickle.

2. Mickey Mouse

Juan Ponce Enrile was already a young kid when American animator Walt Disney released the cartoon Steamboat Willie which starred Mickey Mouse. The short movie is the first animated film with sound which eventually became wildly popular. Our Filipino comic character counterpart, Tony Velasquez’s Kengkoy, is ofcourse, also younger than the gentleman from Cagayan.

 

1. You

According to the 2010 Census of Population and Housing, the total population of the Philippines as of May 1, 2010 is 92,337,852 – and about 4 million (or roughly 4.3 %) are over 65 years of age… And you’ll only be older than political icon Juan Ponce Enrile if you are an nonagenarian born before 1924.

Well, as an addendum, the following are some of things older than JPE.

·         Homo Habilis

·         Magellan’s Discovery of the Philippines

·         Fire

·         Dirt

·         Lapu-Lapu

·         Jesus

·         Money

·         The Wheel

·         Happiness

Photo Credits:

“Ball-point Pen” http://classicgeorge.blogspot.com/2011/08/toddler-swallows-ballpoint-pen.html

“Chocolate Chip Cookies” http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/metric-cookies.cfm

“Larry King” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King

On a personal note, thanks to the 8List.ph for featuring my comedic article.