Football-loving nun ‘is world’s oldest living person’: From only just surviving childhood to hitting the age of 117… as she reveals the secret to longevity
Jeanne Calment
The certified oldest person ever was French woman Jeanne Calment, who died aged 122 and 164 days in 1997.
Her unparalleled longevity has been the subject of numerous studies, both before and after her death.
Jeanne enjoyed good health for the majority of her life and even took up fencing as a hobby at the age of 85.
The world’s oldest man ever was Jiroemon Kimura, from Japan, who died aged 116 years, 54 days in 2013
Ms Calment also claimed to have met the artist Vincent van Gogh, to whom she sold painting canvasses in her father’s shop as a teenager.
‘He was ugly as sin, had a vile temper and smelled of booze,’ she said.
She continued smoking until she was 117 and used to rub olive oil into her skin.
Jiroemon Kimura
Japanese man Jiroemon Kimura, officially the oldest man to have ever lived, died aged 116 in 2013.
On his 115th birthday, Mr Kimura attributed his longevity to getting out in the sunlight.
‘I am always looking up towards the sky. That is how I am,’ he said.
Kimura ate a three-meal-a-day diet of rice, pumpkins and sweet potatoes.
The world’s oldest man ever was Jiroemon Kimura, from Japan, who died aged 116 years, 54 days in 2013
He reportedly did not smoke and said he only ate until he felt 80 per cent full.
According to one town official his motto in life was ‘to eat light and live long’.
When he was born back in 1897, Japan was coming to the end of its feudal period which saw the final days of the Samurai warrior class and the birth of a modern imperialist state.
When Japan entered WWI on the side of the British in 1915 he was already 18 years old, and when it allied itself with Germany in 1940 at the start of WWII he was already pushing on 43.
When the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima he was 48 but he resumed work as a postman at the end of the war and went on to live for another 68 years.
Kane Tanaka
When Japanese woman Kane Tanaka died aged 119 in 2022, she was the world’s oldest person.
She was born January 2, 1903, in the southwestern Fukuoka region of Japan in the same year the Wright brothers flew for the first time and Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
When Japanese woman Kane Tanaka died aged 119 in 2022, she was the world’s oldest person
In her younger years, Ms Tanaka ran various businesses including a noodle shop and a rice cake store.
A century ago, she married Hideo Tanaka in 1922, giving birth to four children and adopting a fifth.
She had planned to use a wheelchair to take part in the torch relay for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but the pandemic prevented her from doing so.
On her 119th birthday on January 2, 2022, Ms Tanaka’s family members said she hoped to live to 120.
In her younger years, Ms Tanaka ran various businesses including a noodle shop and a rice cake store
Sarah Knauss
American woman Sarah Knauss died on December 30, 1999, just two days short of the new Millennium.
The former seamstress, who loved chocolate, crisps, popcorn and cashew nuts, left a daughter aged 96 when she died.
American woman Sarah Knauss died on December 30, 1999, just two days short of the new Millennium. The former seamstress, who loved chocolate, crisps, popcorn and cashew nuts, left a daughter aged 96 when she died
Born on September 24, 1880, she died peacefully in her sleep in a nursing home in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Although she was frail in her later years, she continued to get up most mornings to have breakfast in the dining room of her care home and also visited the hairdresser once a week.
At her 119th birthday, Mrs Knauss’s great-great-great grandson, then aged three, was present.
