The World’s Oldest People
With the improvements in lifestyle and healthcare, more and more people live to a very advanced age. The word “supercentenarian” has even been created to invent people living to 110 years or more. This article is an chronicle of (an a tribute to) the world inhabitants (26 individuals as of August 2009: 3 males, 23 females) who have been officially recognized living 115 years or more. Only one of these persons, Gertrude Baines, is unruffled alive. The second oldest living person in the world being “only” 114, is not included in this list.
1. Jeanne Calment (122 years 164 days)
French
21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997
Jeanne Calment was born in Arles, where she spent her entire life. Her father was a shipbuilder, and her mother from a family of millers. In 1896, when she was 21, she married her second cousin, Fernand Calment, who was a wealthy store owner. Jeanne never had to work and could play tennis, cycle, swim, rollerskate, piano and grunt. Fernand died poisoned by evil cherries, in 1942. The couple’s daughter died in 1934, aged 36, from pneumonia, and Jeanne’s only grandson, a medical doctor, killed himself in a motorcycle accident, also aged 36, in 1963.
In 1965, with no living heir, 90 year-old Jeanne signed a deal to sell her obsolete apartment to 47 year-old lawyer Andre-Francois Raffray, on a contingency contract. He agreed to pay her 2,500 francs a month until her death. Raffray ended up paying more than the double of the apartment’s value and, when he died in 1995, aged 77, his widow continued the payments until Calment’s death.
Jeanne Calment took up fencing at age 85, and at 100, she was collected riding a bicycle. She lived on her enjoy until she was 110, before engrossing to a nursing home in 1985 after a cooking accident (she was almost blind) started a small fire in her apartment.
Jeanne Calment was able to walk until she fractured her femur and had to be operated, just short of her 115th birthday. She was an occasional smoker until she was 119 and attributed her long life to garlic, vegetables, red wine, olive oil, chocolate (she ate nearly a kilo a week) and…cigarettes.
Jeanne Calment is the undisputed oldest person the world has ever known. Her own parents lived to be 86 and 93, and her older brother, 97.
Calment became famous for being the last living person to have met Vincent van Gogh, when she was 13 (he wanted to pick canvas in her uncle’s fabric’s shop). Calment described the painter as “dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable”, and “very plain, ungracious, impolite, sick”.
2. Shigechiyo Izumi (120 years?, 237 days)
Japan
29 June 29, 1865? – 21 February 1986
Born on the diminutive island of Tokunoshima, Shigechiyo Izumi started working in 1872, when he was 7 years old, goading draft animals at a sugar mill. Adult, he measured 1.42 m (4 ft, 8 in) and weighed 42.6 kg (94 pounds). His wife died at the age of 90. Shigechiyo Izumi retired a sugarcane farmer at age 105.
He lived through 71 Japanese Prime Ministers and died of pneumonia after a brief hospitalization. He claimed his long life was due to “the Gods, Buddha and the Sun.” Izumi drank alcohol (brown sugar sake) and started smoking when he was 70.
If his claimed birth-date is correct (it is suspected that he might have been born in 1880 and that his birth certificate may actually have been that of his older brother, who died young and whose name might have been reused as a necronym), he died older than any other recognized man, and was the second-longest lived human ever, ad had the longest working career ever (98 years)
3. Sarah Knauss, nee Clack (119 years, 97 days)
USA
24 September 1880 – 30 December 1999
Sarah DeRemer Clark was born in Hollywood, a small short-lived Pennsylvania mining town. In 1901, she married Abraham Lincoln Knauss, who was a Republican leader in Lehigh County. Knauss was a homemaker and insurance office manager. Sarah became a widow in 1965, after 64 years of marriage. Knauss claimed that she enjoyed her long life “because I have my health and I can do things”. She loved watching golf on television, doing needlepoint, and a bit of junk food: chocolate turtles, cashews and potato chips.
Sarah Knauss died quietly (without being ill) in her retirement home in Allentown, 33 hours before 2000, survived by her 96 year-old daughter (she died aged 101) who explained her mother’s longevity by saying: “She’s a very quiet person and nothing fazes her. That’s why she’s living this long.” Knauss had been the oldest living person in the world.
4. Lucy Hannah, nee Terrell (117 years, 248 days)
USA
16 July 1875 – 21 March 1993
Lucy Terrell was born in Linden, Alabama. She moved to Detroit, Michigan (where she died), in order to escape the racial tensions of the deep South. Her case was only investigated more than 10 years after her death and she was officially recognized the second longest-living American ever.
5. Marie-Louise Meilleur, nee Chasse (117 years, 230 days)
Canada
29 August 1880 – 16 April 1998
Marie-Louise Chasse was born in Kamouraska, Quebec, where she married her first husband, Étienne Leclerc, in 1900. After he and both of her parents died in 1911-1912, Marie-Louise left two of her four surviving children behind and moved to Ontario in 1913. Only once, in 1939, did she return to the Quebec area.
She married Hector Meilleur in 1915 and had another six children. When Hector died, in 1972, Marie-Louise moved in with one of her daughters before living in a nursing home in Corbeil. At the time of her death – she was then the oldest person in the world -, in 1998, one of her sons was living in the same nursing home, and her oldest living daughter was 90 years old. Marie-Louise Meilleur, the oldest Canadian ever, was a vegetarian but also an avid cigarette smoker.
6. Maria Capovilla, nee Lecaro (116 years, 347 days)
Ecuador
14 September 1889 – 27 August 2006
Maria Esther Heredia Lecaro was born in Guyaquil, the daughter of a colonel. She belonged to the upper-class elite, attending social functions and art classes. In 1917, Maria married a military officer, Antonio Capovilla, who died in 1949 after giving her five children (three of whom were living at Maria’s death).
At age 100, Capovilla nearly died and was given last rites, but had been free of health problems since then. She lived with one of her daughters and son-in-law, and once she reached 114 became unable to leave her home physically. By the time she turned 116, though, she was in good health and able to watch TV, read the papers and even walk without the aid of a stick (though she was helped by an aide).
By March 2006, however, Capovilla’s health had declined and she was no longer able to read the newspaper, nearly stopped talking and no longer walked except when helped by two persons. She died of penumonia just 18 days prior to her 117th birthday. She was the oldest person at the timeand is the oldest person to have lived in three centuries. She never smoked nor drank alcohol.
7. Tane Ikai (116 years, 175 days)
Japan
18 January 1879 – 12 July 1995
Ikai moved to a retirement home in 1972 at age 93 and enjoyed sewing and pottery making until she suffered a stroke at 99, and a second one at age 113, which left her bed-ridden.
Tane Ikai ate three meals of rice gruel a day. She died of kidney failure in Nagoya, outliving her daughter and three sons. She had been Japan’s oldest living person since 1992 and is still Japan’s oldest ever female, and their oldest undisputed person.
8. Elizabeth Bolden, nee Jones (116 years, 118 days)
USA
15 August 15 1890 – 11 December 2006
Elizabeth Jones was born in 1890 in Somerville, Tennessee, the daughter of freed slaves. She married Lewis Bolden in 1908 and they had 7 children (5 of whom died before their mother). At the end of her life, she lived in a nursing home in Memphis, Tennessee and was unable to communicate.
At the time of her 116th birthday in August 2006, Lizzie had 40 grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren, 150 great-great-grandchildren, 220 great-great-great grandchildren and 75 great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Elizabeth Bolden died the oldest person in the world.
9. Carrie White, nee Joyner (116 years, 88 days)
USA
18 November 1874? – 14 February 1991
Carrie was institutionalized in a nursing home in Palatka, Florida, after a nervous breakdown in 1909, at the time of her divorce. Her documentation was described as impeccable, but recent research has indicated she might in fact have been 21 rather than 35 when she was admitted, meaning she may have died at 102 (instead of 116).
10. Kamato Hongo (116 years, 45 days)
Japan
16 September 1887? – 31 October 2003
Born in the dinky island of Tokunoshima (home of Shigechiyo Izumi), she later moved to Kagoshima on Kyushu, where she lived with her daughter.
When she became the oldest person in Japan, in 1999, Kamato Hongo became the focus of some merchandise (washcloths, keyrings, phone cards, etc.) which highlighted her longevity. For a year an a half, she was the world’s oldest person.
Kyushu, the “island of longevity”, has been home to a number of other supercentenarians.
11. Maggie Barnes, nee Hinnant (115 years, 319 days)
USA
6 March 1882 – 19 January 1998
Maggie Hinnant was born to a slave and married Barnes, a tenant farmer who gave her 15 children (11 of whom died before her). The supercentenarian of Johnston County, North Carolina, died from complications following a minor foot infection.
Her date of birth is disputed: 1882 according to the family Bible, 1881 according to the 1900 US Census, 1880 on her marriage license.
12. Christian Mortensen (115 years, 252 days)
Denmark-USA
16 August 1882 – 25 April 1998
Thomas Peter Thorvald Kristian Ferdinand Mortensen, known as Christian Mortensen, was born in Fruering, Denmark, where he worked as a farmhand and apprenticed as a tailor before immigrating to the United States in 1903, at age 21. There, he lived in different places and had different jobs, notably milkman in a can factory. He was briefly (unhappily) married and had no children. After what he did not date any more women.
In 1973, when he was 91, Mortensen rode his bicycle to the Aldersly Retirement Community in San Rafael, claiming that he was Danish, and that he was there to stay… which he did, for his remaining 25 years.
Mortensen hopped to get the Guinness “oldest living person” title, but when on August 14, 1997, Guinness named Marie-Louise Meilleur of Canada (age 116) instead, he angered: “they just did that to spoil my birthday” (he turned 115 two days later). When he found out that Sarah Knauss (116) was older too he said “c’est la vie.”
Mortensen was blind towards the end of his life and spent much of his time in a wheelchair listening to the radio. He also had an occasional cigar, ate poultru and fish, but avoided red meat and drank boiled water.
Mortensen is the oldest person ever born in Denmark, the oldest male ever to die in the United States, and the oldest male ever whose age is undisputed.
13. Charlotte Hughes, nee Milburn (115 years, 228 days)
UK
1 August 1877 – 17 March 1993
Charlotte became a schoolteacher at age 13. She married in 1940 at age 63, after retiring. Her husband, Noel Hughes, died in 1980, aged 103, after 40 years of marriage.
In 1985, Charlotte, a Labour supporter, had tea with then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and described Thatcher as “a very nice woman”. For her 110th birthday, Charlotte Hughes became one of only two ever recorded supercentenarian air passengers when she flew on Concorde to Unusual York City. There she stayed at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for four days on an all-expenses paid visit and met the mayor Ed Koch.
Hughes lived in her own home in Marske-by-the-Sea, but in 1991, at the age of 113, she was becoming too outmoded to look after herself and moved to a nursing home in Redcar. Charlotte spent her final years in a wheelchair, but remained in robust health and mentally alert and entertaining to the end of her life. She is the longest-lived person in the United Kingdom.
14. Edna Ruth Parker, nee Scott (115 years, 220 days)
USA
20 April 1893 – 26 November 2008
Edna Scott was born in 1893, on a farm in Shelby County, Indiana. She was raised eating a typical farm diet of meat and starch. She became a teacher and taught at a two-room schoolhouse in Smithland until she married her next door neighbor, Earl Parker, in 1913. Earl died in 1939, when Edna (who oulived their two sons) was 45.
Parker then lived alone on a farm on Blueridge Road until age 100, when, still in very strong health, she moved in with one of her sons. One winter night, when her son and daughter-in-law returned home from a basketball game, they found Edna unconscious in the snow, in the back yard. Her family feared her death, but she made a full recovery except for only mild injuries. After that incident, Parker moved to a nursing home.
Edna Parker liked reading and reciting poetry and read the newspaper everyday. She became the world’s oldest person in August 2007. One of her sisters lived to be 99 years.
15. Margaret Skeete, nee Seward (115 years, 192 days)
USA
27 Octobe 1878 – 7 May 1994
Margaret Seward was born in Rockport, Texas. She married Renn Skeete, and later moved on to Radford, Virginia, where she died in 1994, after suffering a fall.
16. Gertrude Baines (115 years, 158 days)
USA
6 April 1894 – 11 September 2009
Gertrude was the oldest person in the world between January 2009 and September 2009.
Gertrude Baines was born in Shellman, Georgia, to a former slave. She married Sam Conly at a very young age and had a daughter, Annabelle, in 1909, when she was barely 15. Annabelle died of typhoid fever at age 18. Gertrude lived in Hartford, Connecticut, then worked as a maid at Ohio State University, and moved much later to Los Angeles, California. She lived on her own until she was 105. Baines voted twice in her life: for John F. Kennedy, and in 2008, for Barack Obama.
Just before she turned 115, Gertrude was hospitalized for dehydration, but she made a expeditiously recovery. Aside from her arthritis and inability to walk, she is in superb health and enjoys “simple pleasures” of eating a diet of bacon and eggs, and shows like The Ticket Is Legal and Jerry Springer.
When asked the secret of her longevity, Baines answered: “God. Ask him… I took good care of myself, the blueprint He wanted me to.” She also has said, “No, I didn’t never consider I’d live this long.”
17. Anitica Butariu (115 years, 157 days? )
Romania
17 June 1882?
21 November 1997
Not much is known about Butariu. Her claim was accepted by Romanian authorities, but has still to be current by international gerontology organizations. Butariu’s stated birthdate is 17 June 1882, however Romania did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until March 1919 and therefore her age may be inflated by 13 days. Anitica Butariu is the oldest Romanian ever recorded.
18. Emiliano Mercado del Toro (115 years, 156 days)
Puerto Rico
21 August 1891 – 24 January 2007
Emiliano (or ‘Emilio’) was born in Cabo Rojo. Mercado was a child when U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, and he clearly remembered the fighting that marked the demolish of Spain’s colonial empire in the Americas. In 1918, Mercado was level-headed in training camp, and though he never took allotment in WWI combats, this makes him the longest-lived passe ever.
The supercentenarian worked in the cane fields until the age of 81. Emiliano never married nor had children, but claimed he had three “girlfriends” in his life. He also claimed to have been at the “dancing club” (euphemism for a bordello) owned by Isabel “la Negra” Luberza Oppenheimer the day she was assassinated. The then 83 year-old hid under a table when shots were fired. Asked what he was doing there, he said: “praying… or at least I was when the bullets started flying!”
After a fall affected his hipbone when he was 102, Mercado del Toro went to leave with his 85 year-old niece in Isabella. He credited his longevity to his daily meal of ‘funche’, a boiled corn, codfish and milk cream-like dish, and his sense of humor.
On his last two birthdays Mercado received the visit of his idol, Puerto Rican vedette and media icon Iris Chacon. Emiliano Mercado del Toro was the world’s oldest person for six weeks, the oldest Puerto Rican ever, and verified person ever in the history of Puerto Rico.
19. Bettie Wilson, nee Rutherford (115 years, 153 days)
USA
13 September 1890 – 13 February 2006
Born in Mississippi of freed slaves. In April 2005, Bettie moved into a new home, in New Albany, funded by donations, where she died, less than a year later. She was survived by her oldest son, Will Rogers (he died in October 2008, a few days short of his 99th birthday), 5 grandchildren, 46 great-grandchildren, 95 great-great-grandchildren and 38 great-great-great-grandchildren.
20. Julie Winnefred Bertrand (115 years, 124 days)
Canada
16 September 1891 – 18 January 2007
In her youth, Julie Bertrand was courted by future Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. However, she never married. In 2004, at age 113, the Montreal supercentenarian was in fairly good health, dressing daily, having her hair done twice a week, and enjoying a glass of wine now and then. Her memory was alos quite good, and she could recognize friends and relatives. Two years later, though, Bertrand was sleeping almost all the time. Julie Bertrand is the second longest lived person in Canada.
21. Maria de Jesus dos Santos, nee de Jesus (115 years, 114 days)
Portugal
10 September 1893 – 2 January 2009
Maria de Jesus married Jose dos Santos in 1919 and became a widow in 1951. The couple had had five children, two dying before their mother. Jesus worked on the land for her entire life and lived in her own house with one of her daughters.
During her lifetime, Maria visited the hospital only once and was reportedly a healthy person, with the exception of her mobility, which deteriorated over her last years (but she could still walk around with the aid of a walker), and serious problems with her peek and hearing.
was the world’s oldest verified living person for five weeks, until her death at 115 years and 114 days.
Maria Jesus enjoyed looking at old family albums, sunbathing on her porch, eating rice pudding and ice cream, as well as taking baths. She never smoked nor drank alcohol nor coffee, and didn’t eat meat (but did eat fish). At the time of her death a septic shock, she was the oldest person in the world.
22. Susie Gibson, nee Potts (115 years, 108 days)
USA
31 October 1890 (or 1889, according to herself) – 16 February 2006
Susie was born in Corinth, Mississippi. The 1900 and 1920 Census, lists her as born in 1890, however, her Social Security record lists her as born in 1889. Susie Potts married James W. Gibson in 1915, and moved to Sheffield, Alabama. James died in 1955, and the couple’s only child, James Jr., died in 1987, aged 70. Susie lived on her own until age 104, when she moved into a nursing home in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
Susie was in remarkable physical and mentel shape until her final months. When she was interviewed at age 104, she could still occupy the sinking of the Titanic or finding lost bullets on the Shiloh battlefields.
23. Hendrikje “Henny” van Andel-Schipper, nee Schipper (115 years, 62 days)
Netherlands
29 June 1890 – 30 August 2005
Henny Schipper was born prematurely in Smilde, a small village in Drenthe. She barely survived, thanks to the continuous care of her grandmother during her first four weeks. At the age of five on her first day of school, she was sick again and removed from the school on advice of a local doctor. Its her father, head of the local school, who taught her to read and write. Henny wanted to be an actress, but after her mother objected to that career, became a needlework teacher instead.
Hendrikje left her parents home when she was 47 years feeble and married Dick van Andel, a tax inspector living in Amsterdam, two years later,in 1939. During the Second World War, the couple moved to Hoogeveen, where Hendrikje had to sell jewelery to help pay for food during the German occupation. Her husband died from cancer in 1959.
Van Andel-Schipper herself was diagnosed with a breast cancer at the age of 100 and underwent a mastectomy in 1995. She lived onher own until the age of 105, when she moved to a retirement home.
For her 115th birthday in 2005, Henny received a visit from the daughter-in-law of the Queen of the Netherlands and a delegation from the Ajax football club to whom she complained that the other residents of her nursing home were “hicks who don’t understand football”. She had been a fan of the football club Ajax Amsterdam since she attended a match more than 80 years earlier.
Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper remained mentally alert to the destroy and died peacefully in her sleep, although she had been diagnosed with a gastric cancer, and is the oldest person ever in the history of the Netherlands.
Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper said that the secret to her longevity was a serving of herring every day and drinking orange juice, and advised: “Don’t smoke and don’t drink too much alcohol. Just a small advocat with cream on Sundays and holidays. And you must remain active.”
24. Maud(e) Farris-Luse, nee Davis (115 years, 56 days)
American
21 January 1887 – 18 March 2002
Maude Davis was born in Morley, Michigan, but moved to Steuben County, Indiana, in 1891. Feeble 16, she married Jason Ferris (the name’s spelling was later changed to Farris), who worked in the livery stable of a hotel. The same year, 1903, she saw her first automobile. The couple moved to Coldwater in 1925, where the last of their seven children was born. Farris died in 1951, and Maude married Walter Luse. Farris-Luse outlived six of her seven children and was the oldest person in the world at the time of her death.
25. Marie Marthe Augustine Lemaitre Bremont, nee Mesange (115 years, 42 days)
French
25 April 1886 – 6 June 2001
Marie Marthe Augustine Mesange was born in Noellet. She married railroad worker Constant Lemaitre, who was killed in WWI. Her second husband, Florentin Bremont, was a taxi driver who died in 1967. Marie Marthe never had children. She worked in a pharmaceutical factory, as a nanny, as a semstress… At 103, she was hit by a car and broke her arm. Marie Marthe Bremont was the oldest person in the world when she died in Cande, Maine-et-Loire, and is still the second oldest French person ever.
26. Annie Jennings, nee Thomas (115 years, 8 days)
United Kingdom
12 November 1884 – 20 November 1999
Annie Jennings was a teacher. She lived in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and never had children. She is the second ever oldest British person.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigechiyo_Izumi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Hanna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Louise_Meilleur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tane_Ikai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_C._White#Carrie_C._White
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamato_Hongo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Barnes#Maggie_Barnes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Mortensen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Hughes_(supercentenarian)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Baines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Mercado_del_Toro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Br%C3%A9mont
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Farris-Luse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Parker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_de_Jesus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrikje_van_Andel-Schipper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Skeete
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettie_Wilson#Bettie_Wilson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Winnefred_Bertrand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susie_Gibson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jennings
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