The locals knew him as a "weird loner", who lived off of a steady diet of canned fish, crackers, and fruit. He lived in a strewn-together little hovel with no electricity on the edge of town, near the railroad tracks down by Ewing, New Jersey. He was routinely seen as he stopped by a local delicatessen, where he would pick up his tin can delights, along with several newspapers, eight of which he read every night when he returned home. In fact, he spent all night, every night, reading those newspapers, because Albert Herpin was the New Jersey man best known for never sleeping a day in his life. Herpin, according to a New York Times article from February 29, 1904, was born in France in 1862 (although some accounts place his year of birth as early as 1851). He was injured in a carriage accident at an early age, and doctors attending to the youth noticed that he never seemed to close his eyes; hence, it was believed at the time that young Herpin would not live long, as his rare condition