My paternal grandfather, shown here in a portrait of himself he absolutely hated, would have been 129 years old if he were still alive today. Needless to remark, he is very much not alive today. He died in 1952 at the age of 72, unaware that King George VI had passed away and been replaced by Her Maj. The servants (yes) were forbidden from telling him, lest it hasten The End. But I digress. He was 34 years old – and thus beyond fighting age – when World War I began, and 59 years old at the outbreak of World War II. That’s pretty old.
So I’ve done a spot of research into the world’s oldest people ever. (Interestingly, the third website that came up when I searched under ‘world’s oldest’ was about prostitution. ‘Redirect: World’s Oldest Profession’.) It would seem there is quite some caché in being the crustiest person that ever did live, and numerous people have been discounted on suspicion of fiddling (or indeed forgetting – you know what old people are like) their dates of birth.
The current oldest living person is American Gertrude Baines, whose parents were actual slaves, and who will be 115 in April. Gertrude’s still a few years off the world record, held by Jeanne Calment of France, who made it to 122 years and 164 days before her death in 1997. She never did a day’s work in her life, took up fencing at 85 and gave up smoking at 117. The second oldest person ever is a Japanese chap (120 years, 237 days), who worked for 98 years and lived through 71 Japanese Prime Ministers, but he stands accused of secretly having been a sprightly 105 years old at the time of his death.
The rest of the top ten are women – and indeed, 90 of the top 100 oldest people ever are women. Presumably the times in which they all lived have something to do with that: most of these women were born in about 1890, making them only 20-something when World War I broke out and their brothers and boyfriends marched off to their deaths, leaving my aged 30-something grandfather behind to do whatever middle-aged non-soldiers did in those days. Pose for portraits and holiday on the Isle of Wight, by the looks of family photo albums.
Well, happy birthday, aged grandfather.
So I’ve done a spot of research into the world’s oldest people ever. (Interestingly, the third website that came up when I searched under ‘world’s oldest’ was about prostitution. ‘Redirect: World’s Oldest Profession’.) It would seem there is quite some caché in being the crustiest person that ever did live, and numerous people have been discounted on suspicion of fiddling (or indeed forgetting – you know what old people are like) their dates of birth.
The current oldest living person is American Gertrude Baines, whose parents were actual slaves, and who will be 115 in April. Gertrude’s still a few years off the world record, held by Jeanne Calment of France, who made it to 122 years and 164 days before her death in 1997. She never did a day’s work in her life, took up fencing at 85 and gave up smoking at 117. The second oldest person ever is a Japanese chap (120 years, 237 days), who worked for 98 years and lived through 71 Japanese Prime Ministers, but he stands accused of secretly having been a sprightly 105 years old at the time of his death.
The rest of the top ten are women – and indeed, 90 of the top 100 oldest people ever are women. Presumably the times in which they all lived have something to do with that: most of these women were born in about 1890, making them only 20-something when World War I broke out and their brothers and boyfriends marched off to their deaths, leaving my aged 30-something grandfather behind to do whatever middle-aged non-soldiers did in those days. Pose for portraits and holiday on the Isle of Wight, by the looks of family photo albums.
Well, happy birthday, aged grandfather.
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