It’s confirmed: This 116-year-old Italian woman is the oldest person in the world
It’s confirmed: This 116-year-old Italian woman is the oldest person in the world
By Colby Itkowitz May 16
Emma Morano poses next to a picture of herself when she was young, in Verbania, Italy,
on May 13. (Antonino Di Marco/ANSA via AP)
The oldest living person in the world, and perhaps the only one left who has touched three centuries, is a raw-egg-eating, brandy-drinking Italian woman who credits her long life to her daily eggs, her early bedtime and being single.
On Monday, the Guinness World Records confirmed that Emma Morano, at 116 years and 169 days old, is the oldest living person.
“The oldest living person record category continues to capture the world’s collective imagination,” said Marco Frigatti, the GWR head of records. “Ms Morano has experienced things first hand that will soon be consigned to memory, and the record books. She can teach us all a lesson of the value of a life well lived.”
Morano received the news Friday morning that Susannah Mushatt Jones, a New York woman several months her senior, had died Thursday evening, passing the distinction of oldest person to Morano.
Upon hearing of her new title, she said: “My word, I’m as old as the hills,” a caregiver, Rosi Santoni, told the Telegraph.
The Italian supercentenarian was born in the Piedmont region of northern Italy on Nov 29, 1899. She lives now in a small lakeside town near the Switzerland border, still in her own one-bedroom home. Doctors make house calls, but for a 116-year-old, her health is good.
As a teenager, a doctor told her to eat raw eggs for her anemia, and so she has every day since, according to a New York Times profile in 2015. She also eats minced meat and pasta daily.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/05/13/meet-the-116-year-old-italian-woman-who-is-the-last-living-person-born-in-the-1800s
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