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The World's Oldest People (Documented; Verified)

Connie Haines, a well-known American pop singer of the late 1940s and early 1950s, died earlier this week at age 87.

She is survived by her Mother!

Mom is 109.
 
According to the latest figures, almost 20,000 people were set to turn 100 this year alone - receiving a congratulatory silver cup and letter from the prime minister.

We had better tell the Queen about this....
 
Kondoru said:
According to the latest figures, almost 20,000 people were set to turn 100 this year alone - receiving a congratulatory silver cup and letter from the prime minister.

We had better tell the Queen about this....

Wasn't her role absorbed into the PMs office by Blair?
 
Just found this news story, and remembered that FT ran an article on super-centenarians a while back.

The oldest known person in the world, Maria Gomes Valentim died today, aged 114.

http://gu.com/p/3v3fa

"With Maria's passing, the title of oldest living person reverts back to American Besse Cooper, age 114 years 299 days," Guinness said. The Georgia woman's son, Sid Cooper, said his mother was doing well at her Monroe retirement community.

"She's gained some weight, she's eating real good," he said. "Her memory is still really good. She remembers things from a long time ago and recognises people."

Guinness verified that Valentim was born on 9 July 1896, in the city of Carangola in the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais, where she lived all her life.

Last month, Valentim, who was known as Grandma Quita, attributed her longevity to a healthy diet: eating a roll of bread every morning with coffee, fruit and the occasional milk with linseed.

Valentim's family told reporters she had a stubborn streak and always made a habit of minding her own business. They also said that her father lived to be 100.
 
State's oldest citizen never knew how to 'worry'
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/obi ... 73008.html
Sat, Sep 24, 2011

Olivia Breen: OLIVIA BREEN, who has died in her 110th year, was Ireland’s oldest citizen. Her life spanned the sinking of the Titanic and the attack on the Twin Towers. She lived through the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and two world wars, as well as the Cold War.

Born in Wexford in 1901, she was one of six children of J Richard Dier and his wife Eliza (née Watchorn). Her father, a member of the Irish branch of an Anglo-Saxon family, farmed 200 acres at Coolbawn, Clonroche, and was a justice of the peace. Her mother was from Carlow.

Her brother Richard died in the Battle of the Somme, while another brother John practised medicine in Scotland, having qualified from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Edinburgh University.

The family kept horses and rode to hounds. Her father, while in his 90th year, rode with the Bree Hunt on St Patrick’s Day, 1947. Olivia herself was a fine horsewoman, and rode regularly with the hunt.

She closely followed show-jumping, and Iris Kellett and Eddie Macken were among her favourite riders.

In 1932 she was married to Patrick Breen of Milltown, Co Kerry, and they had three sons and a daughter. The family lived for many years in Portlaw, Co Waterford, and then moved to Dublin, where her husband died in 1964. She later settled in Cork.

She embraced the many changes and developments in Irish society and was guided by a simple philosophy: “Never look back.”

Her interests included literature, and she never tired of Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters; she also enjoyed listening to radio plays. Gardening was another of her pastimes and she was very close to nature throughout her life.

She attributed her longevity to strength of spirit and a carefree attitude. “She always said she never knew the meaning of the word ‘worry’,” according to her daughter-in-law, Rose Breen.

She moved into the Care Choice nursing home, in Montenotte, Cork, in 2001, but remained active and alert, keeping herself informed of advances in technology. She said she only used a walking stick to keep the nurses happy.

She received the centenarian’s bounty from President McAleese on her 100th birthday, and each year since.

Buried in Glasnevin Cemetery with her husband, she is survived by her sons Michael, Noel and Gerard and her daughter Florence, and also her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Olivia Breen: born October 3rd, 1901; died September 18th, 2011
 
Laois woman who was oldest person in Ireland dies aged 108
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ire ... 55744.html
Mon, Sep 26, 2011

A Co Laois woman who for five days was the oldest person in Ireland has died aged 108.

Anastasia Kealy, of Balinphrase, Rathdowney, died on Friday.

Last Sunday, Olivia Breen, who was 109, died in Cork.

The oldest person in Ireland now is understood to be Katie McMenamin from Rathmullan, Co Donegal, who last month celebrated her 107th birthday.

Ms Kealy’s removal will take place this evening from her home to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, in Galmoy, arriving at 7pm.

Her funeral takes place tomorrow at 11am.
 
World's oldest man in Japan celebrates 116th birthday
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22211753

Jiroemon Kimura, who used to be a postman, was born in western Japan in 1897

Related Stories

New record for world's oldest man Watch
World's oldest woman is 114 Watch

Japanese man Jiroemon Kimura, who holds the distinction of being the world's oldest living person, is celebrating his 116th birthday on Friday.

Mr Kimura, born on 19 April 1897, is believed to be the last known man to have lived across three centuries.

He worked as a postman until he was 65 years old before taking up farming until he was 90.

Guinness World Records has certified Mr Kimura as the world's oldest living person and the oldest living man.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a video message to Mr Kimura that "it is absolutely amazing" to have his two records.

The mayor of Kyotango City in western Japan where Mr Kimura lives also dropped by for a visit.

Mr Kimura currently lives at home under the care of his grandson's widow and eats his meals thrice a day.

He has 14 grandchildren and dozens of great- and great-great grandchildren, reports say.

He is one of only 12 people in the world still alive who was born before the turn of the 20th century, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo.

Japan is also home to the world's oldest living woman, Misao Okawa, who is 115 years old.
 
Recycled1 said:
The question is, how old is our own Rynner? :)

Rynner's a mere youngster.
 
There is a good article on this in the May 2013 issue of National Geographic

~Allison
 
Bananas, pain killers do trick for world's oldest man
July 27th, 2013 in Health /

A US drug company said Friday it was considering a banana-flavored version of its pain reliever after the world's oldest man attributed his longevity to the fruit and the drug.

Spanish-born Salustiano "Shorty" Sanchez-Blazquez, a 112-year-old former coal miner who lives close to Niagara Falls in upstate New York, was named by Guinness World Records as the oldest certified man on the planet Thursday.
He succeeded Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, who died on June 12 at the age of 116. According to Guinness, Sanchez-Blazquez is currently the only male born in 1901 with proof of birth.

From his birthplace in Spain, he moved at 17 to Cuba, where he worked on sugar plantations, before arriving in the United States via the iconic immigration center on Ellis Island in 1920.

After working as a miner in Kentucky, he eventually settled in the Niagara area, close to the border with Canada.

In a statement, he said he believed he had lived to such an old age thanks to a daily dose of a banana and six tablets of Anacin, a branded pain-reliever that includes aspirin and caffeine.

That naturally delighted Anacin's manufacturer Insight Pharmaceuticals.
"Historically, apples are the fruit most associated with staying healthy and avoiding doctors," said marketing vice-president Jennifer Moyer.

"Our scientists had never looked into the banana before. But now that the certified oldest man in the world credits bananas and Anacin as his life-extending combo, we're certainly going to explore whether a new 'Bananacin' product makes sense."

© 2013 AFP

"Bananas, pain killers do trick for world's oldest man." July 27th, 2013. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-b ... ldest.html
 
Used to be an old lady (definitely in her 80's) working in a small convenience store nearby. She's been gone for a couple weeks and I asked the new girl where she is. Apparently she traveled up-country to take care of her mother who had gotten sick! wow
 
World's oldest man dies at 112 in New York state
Salustiano ‘Shorty’ Sanchez was born in Spain in 1901
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/eu ... -1.1528699

Salustiano “Shorty” Sanchez died on Friday at a nursing home in Grand Island, New York. Photograph: AP Photo/Guiness World Records
Salustiano “Shorty” Sanchez died on Friday at a nursing home in Grand Island, New York. Photograph: AP Photo/Guiness World Records

Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 01:00


The world’s oldest man, a gin rummy-playing one-time sugarcane worker born in Spain, has died at 112 in New York state, a funeral home said on Saturday.

Salustiano “Shorty” Sanchez, recognised by Guinness World Records, died on Friday at a nursing home in Grand Island, New York, the MJ Colucci & Son Funeral Chapels said on its website.

Sanchez was born in El Tejado de Bejar, Spain, in 1901 and worked as a sugarcane field worker in Cuba before emigrating to the United States, the funeral home said.

The world’s oldest man is now Arturo Licata of Italy at 111, and the oldest woman is Misao Okawa of Japan (115), according to the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks people 110 and older and validates ages for Guinness.-(Reuters)
 
Images of documents at link.
111-year-old Syracuse Irish woman the longest-living person in Irish history
She left the Ireland of Michael Collins for America at the dawn of the Roaring 20s
By SHEILA LANGAN, IrishCentral Deputy Editor
Published Thursday, January 9, 2014, 5:00 AMUpdated Thursday, January 9, 2014, 10:10 AM

Kathleen Hayes Rollins Snavely, the longest living Irish person on record. Photographed in November, 2000.
Kathleen Hayes Rollins Snavely, the longest living Irish person on record. Photographed in November, 2000.
Photo by Syracuse University Archives.

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Today, Kathleen Hayes Snavely, 111 years and 328 days-old becomes the longest-living Irish-born person in history. She is originally from Feakle, County Clare.

She surpasses the previous record holder, Katherine Plunkett (November 22, 1820 – October 14, 1932), an Irish aristocrat born in County Louth who was a highly regarded botanical illustrator, and whose story is equally fascinating, though extremely different.

Hard of hearing but clear of mind, Kathleen Snavely is a resident of The Centers at St Camillus in Syracuse, NY where she immigrated to in 1921.

With a distaste for sensationalizing her age, she is, to date, opposed to talking to the press. The snippets of information that could be gleaned over the phone from the staff of St. Camillus create a portrait of a woman who is remarkably lucid: participating in daily activities from her wheelchair and still receiving visits from friends in the Syracuse area.

Strange as it must seem to Kathleen to be famous for simply being alive, she is already something of a celebrity on Internet message boards. Members of the 110 Club, a group dedicated to super centenarians, have been researching Snavely and her ancestry for months, unearthing her birth certificate and further biographical information.

Her nearest kin in the U.S. is the family of her step-children in Lancaster, PA from her second marriage, to a man named Jesse Snavely, Jr., whom she survives by a number of years. Her first husband and long-time business partner, Roxie E. Rollins, passed away in 1968 at the age of 66.

In Ireland, in her native town of Feakle, Co. Clare, she is still remembered by relatives. Peggy Hayes, whose late husband, Patrick Joseph, was related to Kathleen (making her also related to the famed Irish fiddler Martin Hayes of the same family), recalls hearing that she “left young and did well, and that she was from a long-living family.”

Birth certificate for Kathleen Hayes, b. February 16, 1902.

Kathleen Hayes was born on February 16, 1902 to Patrick and Ellen Hayes (née Moroney) in Feakle, Co. Clare. Her birth certificate lists her father as a “Farmer and Publican,” though local memory indicates he was more of the latter. Kathleen was the second of three girls. Her older sister, Mary Anne, was born in 1901, and her younger sister, Ellen, in 1909. The 1911 Census (which lists her sisters’ names as Anna May and Lena), states that the family was Catholic and that all members, aside from one-year-old Ellen, could read and write.

1911 Irish Census entry for the Hayes family of Feakle, County Clare.

She may also have had a younger brother, though he has yet to be found in the local records. In the only known interview with Kathleen, a 2000 press release by Syracuse University announcing her donation of $1 million in memory of her first husband, Kathleen refers to an 88-year-old brother still living in Ireland.

It is not uncommon for people’s personal histories and memories to sometimes clash with the official record. A further example: in the same article from the Syracuse archive, Kathleen recalls working as a business apprentice in Limerick and Dublin before emigrating, while the manifest for the ship on which she traveled lists her as a “Domestic”.

Manifest for the Scythia, 1921. Perhaps Kathleen knew Nora Tuohy, who was also traveling from Feakle, and whose information is recorded below hers.

On September 22, 1921, she boarded a ship called the Scythia in Cobh, Co. Cork. Even though the harbor city’s name had officially been returned in the year before, the manifest still lists it as Queenstown.

Nineteen-years-old, she left the Ireland of Michael Collins and the Irish War of Independence for America at the dawn of the Roaring 20s. Prohibition was in effect, and the economy was thriving. Warren G. Harding had been voted into office as president one year earlier, in the first national election to include the vote of women

Ellis Island arrivals record for September 30, 1921.

After eight days at sea, Kathleen arrived at Ellis Island on September 30, 1921. According to the arrivals record, she had $25.00 to her name (half the “recommended” amount) and was bound for Syracuse to stay with her maternal uncle, Jeremiah Moroney, who lived at 510 Marcellus Street.

Syracuse in the early 1920s

At that point, Syracuse was still a major manufacturing center. Kathleen quickly got a job at E.W. Edwards Department Store, earning, according to the Syracuse University archive, $5.00 for six-day work weeks, before moving up the retail ladder. In Syracuse, she met and married her first husband, Roxie E. Rollins. One of six children of a Canadian father and a mother born in Michigan, Rollins emigrated from Canada in 1907. His mother’s obituary, in the December 6, 1906 edition of the Syracuse Post-Standard, shows that the Rollins family were members of the First Baptist Church of Syracuse.

The Rollins family entry in the 1925 New York State Census

By the time of the 1925 Census, they were married and living with Roxie’s parents in Syracuse’s 19th Ward. Roxie ran a small but enterprising laundry service with business throughout the region, which afforded them their own residence by the time the census officers came knocking in 1930.

Just as the world economy was bottoming out in 1933, Roxie and Kathleen founded Seneca Dairy, opening their first store on South Salina Street.

A Seneca Dairy ad from January, 1964 declares “You’ll have plenty of ‘drive,’ even at 50, if you fuel up each day with energy-packed Seneca Dairy Milk.” For Kathleen Snavely, it’s been more than doublWith both of them working seven days a week, Seneca Dairy made it through the Great Depression with over 40 employees, two local retail stores and an ice cream fountain. As Kathleen recalled in 2000, “Neither of us had a formal business education...We learned on the job, through experience. If you have a feeling for management and enjoy it, experience will give you the skills."

Roxie and Kathleen never had children. He died in 1968, at the age of 66. Two years later, at 68, Kathleen married her second husband, Jesse Clark Snavely, Jr., on February 28, 1970 in Rohrerstown, Pennsylvania. A widower, he had three sons, Jesse, Jere and James, with his first wife, Ella.

The Snavelys have solid roots in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania area, going back to 1878, when Moses Snavely purchased a mill in Paradise Township. His son Jesse, father of the man Kathleen would marry, sold the mill in 1916 and bought a lumber, coal and feed business in Landisville. The company, J.C. Snavely & Sons, Inc. is run today by a fifth generation of Snavelys. Calls to the company’s headquarters were not returned.

Given Jesse’s role in the family business and the fact that they wed in Pennsylvania, it can be surmised that Kathleen parted ways with her adopted city for the years of their marriage. The date of his death is unclear, but by 2000 at the latest, Kathleen was back in Syracuse. In December, 2000, she made a gift of $1 million to the Syracuse University School of Management, in memory of Roxie.

“I can’t think of anything that would please him more than supporting a cause that would help other ambitious young people like us,” she said at the time.

Ireland is especially proud of its centenarians, sending a letter from the president, a commemorative coin and a check (currently €2,540) to each of its citizens who reach the century mark, and continuing the letter and coin tradition each birthday thereafter. Last year, 423 centenarians received the bounty.

Ireland’s second-oldest living citizen is also an immigrant: Sister Mary Victor Waters, 109 (b. September 14, 1904), lives in Tenafly, New Jersey, at the retirement home of the Missionary Franciscan nuns. In an interview with NorthJersey.com, she also expressed some unease over the attention she receives for her age, saying “I’d be just as pleased if they forgot about my birthday.”

Kathleen Snavely’s 112th birthday is February 16th, and while her privacy must be respected, there are so many things one would like to know. Did her grandparents ever talk about the famine years? What was it like to come of age in Ireland in the time of the Easter Rising, to leave in the midst of the Civil War? Was she nervous, coming to America, and what was her experience as a woman and an immigrant? Did she and Roxie dance the Charleston at The Palace or any of the other Syracuse dance halls? What was it like to start a business in that time? Did she live in Pennsylvania but miss Syracuse? Did she ever go back to Ireland? And what does it feel like to have witnessed so much history?

Regardless, the fact that she’s lived long enough to know all the answers is incredible in itself.

Read more: The Incredible life of Kathleen Hayes Snavley, in photos

- - -

Thank you to members of the 110 Club message board for getting the ball rolling on Kathleen Snavely’s ancestry, and to genealogist Megan Smolenyak for her extraordinary insights and research, which produced the Hayes family Census entries, Kathleen’s travel documents, and her further documentation in the U.S. and New York State Census.



Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Syracu ... z2purFG4sG
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World’s oldest man dies in New York, aged 111

The world’s oldest man, a retired chemist and parapsychologist, has died in New York City, aged 111.

A niece of Alexander Imich said he died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan.

Karen Bogen, of Providence, Rhode Island, had visited him a day earlier.

She said his health declined about two weeks ago and he did not recognise her.

Mr Imich was born in 1903 in a town in Poland, then part of Russia. He and his wife fled after the Nazis invaded in 1939 and moved to the United States in 1951. His wife died in 1986.

In news reports, Mr Imich said good genes and a general healthy lifestyle contributed to his longevity.

He credited good genes for his long life, saying his father had lived into his 90s.


“But the life you live is equally or more important for longevity,” he told the Reuters news agency.

He said in an interview last month that his favourite foods were chicken and chocolate.

Mr Imich, a trained chemist, was a scholar of the occult. In 1995, he edited an anthology called Incredible Tales Of The Paranormal.

Guinness World Records are investigating the claim that 111-year-old Sakari Momoi, of Japan, is now the world’s oldest man.

The world’s oldest living person and oldest woman, Misao Okawa of Osaka, Japan is 116 years old; she was born on March 5, 1898.

The longest a person has been known to live, at least an age that could be authenticated by Guinness World Records, is 122 years and 164 days; that person, Louise Calment of France, was born on February 21, 1875, and died in Arles, France, on August 4, 1997.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/worl ... 71530.html
 
Ireland’s oldest man has died at the age of 108

Ireland's oldest man, Luke Dolan, passes away at 108. Credited boiled eggs, sugar in tea and wife for longevity. Photo by: Getty Images/iStockphoto
108-year-old Luke Dolan from Strokestown, County Roscommon, passed away at a local nursing home last week. He had lived on the family farm until he was 100. His wife had died at 86. He credited a boiled egg every day, a great wife and sugar in his tea for his longevity. He had a sister who lived to 106.

Ireland's oldest man is now a near neighbor. Michael Lambert turned 107 last month and met Mr. Dolan for the first time last summer. He lived 20 miles away.

Meanwhile Ireland’s longest living person ever resides in a nursing home in Syracuse, NY.

February 16, 2014 marked the 112th birthday of Kathleen Hayes Snavely, the longest living woman in Irish history. Kathleen broke the previous record of 111 years and 327 days on January 8. Born in Feakle, Co. Clare in 1902, she immigrated to Syracuse in 1921 and still resides there in an elders home – which she moved to just a few years ago.

At her 112th birthday the Ancient Order of Hibernians brought flowers, a choir sang and she regaled those present with tales of Ireland long ago.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Irelan ... f-108.html
 
Today, Kathleen Hayes Rollins Snavely, the longest living person in the history of the Republic of Ireland, is celebrating her 113th birthday in Syracuse, NY.

While still sharp as a tack, Kathleen is known to be private, preferring not to speak with the press. However, her social worker told IrishCentral that some of Kathleen’s friends and relatives will be stopping by for a party.

And there are more celebrations in store – last St. Patrick’s Day was declared Kathleen Hayes Rollins Snavely Day by the City of Syracuse and Onondaga County. On that occasion, Snavely recalled the advice she gave to her younger brothers on the day she left Ireland for the US: “Work hard and you be careful about drinking and grow up to be someone to be proud of."

Born in Feakle, Co. Clare in 1902, she immigrated to Syracuse in 1921 and still resides there in an elders home - which she moved to only a few years ago. Kathleen broke the previous record of 111 years and 327 days on January 8, 2014. The longest living person ever born on the island of Ireland was Annie Scott – born on March 15, 1883 in what is now Northern Ireland. Scott passed away in Scotland in 1996, aged 113 years and 37 days, meaning Snavely is set to again make history again 37 days from now. ...

http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/g...son-in-irish-history-239326091-239672021.html
 
The world’s oldest person has died aged 117

Japanese woman Misao Okawa, who credited her longevity to "eating delicious things" and getting plenty of rest, died early this morning, Japanese media reported. Ms Okawa, the daughter of a cloth merchant in the western city of Osaka, was born in 1898 - the year that the United States annexed the Hawaiian islands and a new drink named Pepsi-Cola was launched.

She shared her birth date with Chinese revolutionary leader Zhou Enlai. ...

The world's oldest person is now Gertrude Weaver of the United States, who will turn 117 on 4 July.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0401/691305-misao-okawa/
 
To be fair her looks were begining to go.



I hope I never make that age.

About ten years ago an Irish ex teacher died at 106, he was driving a car until he was 100. He was was still teaching, half day a week until a few months before his death and was fully mobile and compos mentis. Then just got ill and died. Wouldn't mind lasting like that.
 
Yeah I just don't want to have to have my a*sed wiped and someone feed me. There a lots of dedicated staff in nursing homes and some fine places I just don't want to end up there.

Even if I get old and able to do stuff like the guy you knew I'm already getting fed up with shifting weight and anything above a cut takes days, to weeks to months to fully heal.
 
INKSTER, Michigan: A Detroit-area woman turned 116 Saturday, but she offers no secret for a long life. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” Jeralean Talley of Inkster said ahead of her birthday weekend. Talley will celebrate her birthday twice, including a party on Sunday at her church, New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist. The Gerontology Research Group considers her to be the oldest person in the world, based on available records, followed by Susannah Jones of Brooklyn, New York, who turns 116 in July. “You’re more likely to the win the lottery than to reach this age,” said Robert Young of Gerontology Research. Talley bowled until she was 104 and still likes to catch fish. A daughter, Thelma Holloway, tells the Detroit Free Press that her mother still has a sharp mind. ...

Read More : http://www.nst.com.my/node/85341
 
Kathleen Hayes Rollins Snavely, the longest living person ever born on the island of Ireland, died yesterday morning in Geddes, NY near Syracuse. She was 113 years and 140 days.

She was also the sixth oldest person in the US and the sixteenth longest living person in the world.

Kathleen, who was born in Feakle, Co. Clare in 1902 and immigrated to the US in 1921, was said to be somewhat baffled and bemused by the attention paid to her long life.

"I get so tired of people asking me about my secret. I've got no secret," she told Sean Kirst of the Syracuse Post-Standard at her 113th birthday party in February. ...

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Ol...IrishCentral&utm_campaign=Best of IC - July 7
 
Looking at the secrets of Ireland’s centenarians

... Snavely’s longevity ensured her a place among an exclusive group of Irish “super-centenarians”, individuals (all of them women) who have lived past the age of 110.

The Gerontology Research Group lists nine such individuals from Ireland, two of whom remain unverified, although “almost certainly true”, centenarians.

According to Prof Tom Scharf, director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology atNUI Galway, the number of people exceeding the age of 110 is set to grow.

He describes the longevity of individuals like Katherine Plunket, the second- longest-living Irish woman, who was born in 1820 and was aged 111 years and 327 days when she died, as “an amazing quirk of history”, but says that in future living to be 110 or more may not be as rare an occurrence.

“There seems to be no tailing off in the increase in life expectancy so we haven’t yet hit the plateau. We know with great certainty that the numbers of centenarians are going to grow in the years ahead in Ireland as in other countries.”

“In future we may be talking about people who have passed away at 115 and further down the line . . . as super-centenarians . . . there is no reason to think that that will not happen,” he says.

Figures provided by Áras an Uachtaráin show a general upward trend in the numbers, with 407 Irish people worldwide who turned 100 last year receiving the centenarian bounty.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/irel...e-secrets-of-ireland-s-centenarians-1.2324669
 
Here are some things that did not yet exist when Susannah Mushatt Jones was born in Alabama on July 6, 1899: the Model T, and for that matter the Ford Motor Company. The teddy bear. Thumbtacks and tea bags. Puccini’s Tosca and Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” The Flatiron Building and the subway system beneath it. Emma Morano, an Italian woman born four months later, who is today the only other living soul who was around before 1900.

One hundred and sixteen years ago, Susie’s tenant-farmer father, Callie, could theoretically have voted, though Alabama’s poll taxes and rigged literacy tests pretty much took care of that. As for her mother, she was barred from the polls twice over, because voting rights for women were two decades off. Mary Mushatt had 11 children — Susie being the third and the oldest girl — and cooked on an open fire with water drawn from a well. Corn bread was baked by burying it in the fireplace’s ashes. The family raised their own produce and meat. Susie walked seven miles to what was then called the Calhoun Colored School, a private academy specializing in practical education. Her family paid the boarding-school tuition by barter: wood cut for the fire, bushels of corn they’d grown. ...

When she was about 80 — that is, 35 years ago — she moved into a seniors’ home in Canarsie. At 100, she had to stop cooking for herself and give up her neighborhood-watch role, as her eyesight started to go. (Really, it’s just cataracts, but she is too stubborn to sit for the surgery.) Late in life, she lost her aversion to curse words, though she’d subsequently deny any cussing she did. Miss Susie is her building’s microcelebrity, and on June 17, she became the world’s oldest living person upon the death of Jeralean Talley, who had six weeks on her. ...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/th...woman-is-the-world’s-oldest-person/ar-BBnvOQF
 
Britain's oldest person, Gladys Hooper, has said all she wants for her 113th birthday is to celebrate with a slice of cake and a cup of tea.

The great-grandmother, who was born in the year the Wright brothersinvented the first successful aeroplane, will celebrate with family and friends from across the country at her nursing home in Ryde, Isle of Wight, on Monday.

Mrs Hooper, a former concert pianist, said: "I don't feel very different to when I was 75."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...ishes-for-tea-and-cake-on-113th-birthday.html
 
World's oldest man Yasutaro Koide dies aged 112 in Japan
1 hour ago

The world's oldest man has died at the age of 112 in the Japanese city of Nagoya, local officials say.
Yasutaro Koide, who was born on 13 March 1903, was officially named the oldest man by Guinness World Records in August this year.
At the time he was quoted as saying his secret to long life was not smoking or drinking, not to overdo things and to "live with joy".
Officials said he died of heart failure and pneumonia early on Tuesday.
It is not yet clear who succeeds him as the oldest man.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-...social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
 
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