William Coates (June 2, 1911 – February 24, 2004) was an American man from Maryland who was an unverified claimant as a supercentenarian whose actual age was subsequently disputed.
Coates came to wider prominence when he was covered in a 1999 Washington Post article regarding a celebration of his 110th birthday, with some further coverage in 2002.
[2] The Washington Post quoted the director of a Maryland senior center who had done research on county centenarians as saying Coates was born June 2, 1889.
However, in March 2004, one week after Coates' death, The Washington Post ran a longer follow-up story which quoted the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) who said that a register of William J. Coates with his parents and siblings in the 1930 United States census listed his age as 18 years old.
[3][4] The Washington Post noted in their March 2004 follow-up story that none of Coates' relatives had ever claimed he was 114, and that they knew little of his life.