The Man Who Lived 82 Years and Never Saw a Woman

Mount Athos, a hilly peninsula in Greece, is famous for its 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and its prohibition against women. No human women are allowed in the territory, nor are female domestic animals- with the exception of cats, because their utility as mousers vastly outranks the value of dairy cows and egg-laying chickens. Or maybe the monks were unwilling to give up the pleasure of playing with kittens.

In 1938, the story came out that one man had lived in one of the monasteries since infancy, and had never left Mount Athos during his life, which ended in 1938. This puts Mihailo Tolotos in the position of being the only man in history who lived a full life without ever seeing a woman. Newspaper accounts also said that Tolotos had also never seen a car, a plane, or a movie. Since he died in 1938, it is very possible that he never even saw a photograph of a woman ...if the story is true in the first place. Read what we known about Mihailo Tolotos at Rare Historical Photos. Which is odd in itself, because Tolotos was never identified in a photograph, and we do not know which monastery he belonged to. Still, there are pictures.