THE HAGUE, December 17 (RIA Novosti) - Johannes Leendert van der Giessen, from Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, celebrated his 108th birthday on Monday, the Dutch national news agency said.

Leendert, born on December 17, 1899, is the first Dutch male to live through three centuries in a row.

Johannes, who lives with his 67-year-old son in a house he moved to over 70 years ago, said he did not consider his age as anything special and had no recipe for longevity.

"I worked a lot up to my retirement and I still smoke a pipe or a cigarette every day," he said.

However, Johannes is not the country's oldest living person, that honor does to a woman, Grietje Jansen-Anker, aged 110.

The world's oldest living person, Grigoriy Nestor, died in his sleep at the age of 116 on Sunday in the Lvov Region in western Ukraine.

Nestor, who worked as a shepherd in the village, used to say that he had lived to an old age because he had never been married and had not had his nervous system "undermined on the marital front."

According to Guinness World Records, currently the world's oldest living person is 115-year-old Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico who assumed the title after Elizabeth Bolden, from the U.S., died at the age of 116 years and 118 days in 2006.