Background
Arvonen was born at a time when Finland was still part of the Russian Empire.
Arvonen was born at a time when Finland was still part of the Russian Empire.
He was the third-oldest man in Europe since the death of 110-year-old Frenchman Aimé Avignon, on 23 August 2007. He also became the seventh-oldest man in the world upon the death of American George Francis on 27 December 2008. Aarne Arvonen was born in Helsinki and was the last surviving veteran of the Finnish Civil War of 1918 having served for the Red Guard.
After the Civil War he spent a year at the Tammisaari prison camp.
At this time Arvonen was a smoker. In the summer of 2005, Arvonen was still living in a house he had built himself.
Soon afterwards, however, he was hospitalized due to nephritis. He recovered from the inflammation, and his health was good still in 2008, but he had lost his sight and needed a hearing aid.
His membership lasted nearly 87 years.
He visited London during his centenary celebrations in 1997, and celebrated his 111th birthday in 2008 with his family, but skipped his yearly trip to the local McArthur public, making it a low key affair.
Arvonen was interested in astronomy since his childhood, and in 1921 he became a founding member of the Finnish amateur astronomy association Ursa.
