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These are lists of the known verified oldest men and women, arranged in descending order Due to differences in life expectancy, the oldest women have lived significantly longer than the .. Aarne Arvonen (–), from Finland, was one of the oldest documented men ever, living for years and days. Jeanne Louise Calment was a French woman from Arles widely reported to have been a She became the oldest living person on 11 January at , one hundred years after encountering .. of 37 Celsius, a pulse of 84/min, a height of cm and a weight of 45 kilogrammes which had varied little in previous years.
For example, beginning with the census Calment is listed as a one-year-old , she was indexed in fourteen census documents until After her death, year-old Marie-Louise Meilleur became the oldest recognized living person. Both before and after Calment's death, there have been several claims to have surpassed her age see Unverified longevity claims , but none of these have been proven and Calment therefore continues to hold the record for the oldest verified person ever.
In November , Russian gerontologist Valery Novoselov and mathematician Nikolay Zak advanced the hypothesis that Calment's daughter Yvonne usurped her identity in , by claiming that the daughter died instead of the mother, thus avoiding payment of estate tax. As Yvonne was born in , this situation would have made the purported Jeanne 99 years old upon her death in This would explain the statistically unlikely difference of several years between Calment's documented age and the next dozens of oldest persons ever recorded. Calment's remarkable health presaged her later record.
In lieu of a solid breakfast she would have either white coffee or hot chocolate, and at noon her father would pick her up from school to have lunch at home before she returned to school for the afternoon. At age 15 her cousin and eventual husband started courting her, but she was too young to be interested in boys and preferred sweets. At age 20, incipient cataracts were discovered when she suffered a major episode of conjunctivitis. She also went hunting with her husband in the hills of the Provence to shoot rabbits and wild boars. All her life she took care of her skin with olive oil and a puff of powder to finish off.
After the death of her grandson in August , Calment lived on her own from age 88 until shortly before her th birthday, when she decided to move to a nursing home. After her admission to the care home Maison du Lac [House on the Lake] in January at the age of , she initially had a highly ritualized daily routine whereby, uniquely among the care home residents, she requested to be woken at 6: Seated on her armchair she did gymnastics wearing her stereo headset.
Her exercises included flexing and extending the hands "a distinguished woman must have beautiful hands" , then the legs, and her carers noted that she moved faster than the other residents, who were 30 years younger, despite her blindness. Her breakfast consisted of coffee with milk, and rusks. Her morning ablutions included washing herself unassisted with a flannel rather than taking a shower "an odd invention" , and applying first soap, then olive oil and powder to her face.
She washed her own glass and cutlery before proceeding to lunch. She enjoyed daube braised beef but was not keen on boiled fish. After the meal she smoked a Dunhill cigarette formerly a cigar, a habit she had acquired from her husband and drank a small amount of Port wine.
There's no reason to believe the average life expectancy trend has reached a limit, and the McGill study found that maximum life expectancy follows an identical trend. A year typically refers to a calendar year , the time between two dates of the same name. Retrieved 12 December — via Medium. Gotho was considered a legend in the community. White of Florida, who claimed to have been born in , although this was discounted by subsequent census research.
She enjoyed chocolate and at the age of received a delivery of kilogrammes after challenging a TV presenter — this was then distributed to care homes , and made herself daily a fruit salad based on banana slices and squeezed orange. In the afternoon she would take a nap for two hours in her armchair, and then visit her neighbours in the care home, telling them about the latest news she had heard on the radio. At nightfall she would dine quickly, return to her room, listen to music her eyesight now being too poor for her favorite pastime of crosswords , smoke a last cigarette and go to bed at 10pm.
Medical student Georges Garoyan published a thesis on Calment when she was years old in January The first part records her daily routine see above , and the second presents her medical history. According to this, she had been vaccinated as a child but could not remember the vaccine. Apart from aspirin against migraines she had never taken medicines, not even herbal teas, and had never had German measles, chickenpox, hypertension, diabetes or urinary infections. Concerning her heart, she presented with a moderate left ventricular dysfunction.
In April at age she was admitted to hospital for heart failure and treated with digoxin. More recently she had presented with arthropathies in the ankles, elbows and wrists which were successfully treated with anti-inflammatory medication. She scored well on mental tests except on numeric tasks and recall of recent events. Her blood values were normal between ages —, with no signs of dehydration, anaemia, chronic infection or renal impairment.
Genetic analysis of the HLA system revealed the presence of the DR1 allele , common among centenarians. The electrocardiogramme revealed left ventricular hypertrophy with a mild left atrial dilatation and extrasystolic arrhythmia. Radiology revealed diffuse osteoporosis and in the right hip, incipient osteoarthritis. Ultrasound revealed no anomalies of internal organs. At this stage Calment was still in good shape, and continued to walk without a cane [23] until she fractured her femur during a fall at age January , which required surgery.
At the age of she attracted the attention of researchers Jean-Marie Robine and Dr. Michel Allard, who collaborated with Calment's attending doctor, Dr. They analysed her for over a year and reported that Jeanne Calment's vision was severely impaired by bilateral cataracts, yet she refused to have a routine operation to restore her vision; she had a moderately weak heart and a chronic cough "caused no doubt by her previous use of tobacco" and bouts of rheumatism. On the other hand, she always had good digestion, slept well and had no problems with incontinence.
In terms of pigmentation, her eyes were light gray and her white hair had once been chestnut brown.
With regards to her diet, the three researchers' interviews revealed that in the care home she said she always had a dessert with every meal. She complained about the blandness of the food in the care home and, given a choice, would wish to order fried and spicy foods. At the age of , over a period of six months, she was submitted to neurophysiological tests and a CT scan.
The tests showed that her verbal memory and language fluency was comparable to that of persons with the same level of education in their eighties and nineties. Frontal brain lobe functions were relatively spared from deterioration and there was no evidence of progressive neurological disease, depressive symptoms or other functional illness. Her cognitive functioning was in fact found to improve slightly over the six-month period.
Apocryphal media articles reported varying details. One report claimed that Calment recalled selling "coloured pencils" to Van Gogh, and seeing the Eiffel Tower being built. Bertrand Jeune, Jean-Marie Robine and colleagues compared Jeanne Calment with a list of nearly 20 people worldwide who had securely been verified to have attained at least years of age. The researchers concluded that the lives of these people differed widely, and that there were but few common characteristics: They all seem to have had strong characters, but certainly not all were domineering personalities.
Although they aged slowly, all became very frail and their physical functions declined markedly, especially after their th birthdays. In their final years they required wheelchairs, and were nearly blind and deaf. On her nd birthday on 21 February , it was announced that Calment would make no more public appearances, as her health had seriously deteriorated.
Demographer Jean-Marie Robine , a co-author of a book about Calment, reportedly said that this "allowed her to die, as the attention had kept her alive", [35] while the New York Times reported Robine to have stated that she had been in good health, though almost blind and deaf , as recently as a month before her death.
Calment died of unspecified causes [15] on 4 August around 10 am Central European Time. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. French supercentenarian with the longest confirmed life in history. Longest confirmed human lifespan - since 12 May Oldest living person 11 January — 4 August Only person verified to live to years or beyond First person verified to live to years or beyond.
Validation of the Duration of Her Life". In Spain, average life expectancy at age 60 is France — France also tied second with the other countries in southern Europe with, those over 60 living to the age of 85, on average. Pictured, a couple sit on a bench in Cannes. Andorra — Diet and outdoor lifestyle in Andorra help to keep the country's elderly population healthy.
Australia — The universal health care system in Australia, combined with Australians' outdoor lifestyle, help people live longer, according to experts. New Zealand — The outdoor lifestyle and health infrastructure are credited with keeping New Zealanders healthy and living longer. Switzerland — Switzerland's wealth and health care system are credited with boosting the nation's longevity.
Singapore — After Japan, Singapore has Asia's highest life expectancy at age Monaco — The extensive wealth of the residents of Monaco is likely to be the main factor supporting health in the elderly. San Marino — Like many of the other long-lived countries, San Marino's strong economy and infrastructure are thought to be the reason for its long-lived residents. And despite her age, Morano had a childlike love of cookies, her doctor Carlo Bava said. So much so, she routinely hid them under her pillow so no one would eat them. Morano became the world's oldest living person last year after American Susannah Mushatt Jones died at age She was five years younger than Jeanne Calment, the year-old who held the title for oldest person ever.
Guinness said the oldest living man is Israel Kristal, a Holocaust survivor who turned in September.