British great-grandmother Ethel Caterham turns 116, being the oldest living person in the world.
Caterham was born in Hampshire in 1909 and now lives in a care home in Surrey, has outlived her husband and both her daughters.
Caterham says her secret to long life is never arguing with anyone.
She is the last surviving subject of Edward VII.
Caterham was born three years before the Titanic disaster, eight years before the Russian Revolution and lived through two world wars.
The oldest person who ever lived, whose age could be verified, was Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days.
While people admire such milestones, some researchers say not everyone who claims to be over 110 is really that old.
Oxford researcher Dr Saul Newman looked at places called “Blue Zones” such as Okinawa in Japan and Sardinia in Italy.
Newman says that these places are often said to have many people living past 100 however, the numbers don’t add up.
He also found that Okinawa has one of the lowest life expectancies in Japan and high poverty while Sardinia also has poor areas with high crime but reports many supercentenarians.
Newman believes mistakes in birth records or even pension fraud could explain the claims.
Newman emphasises that in the United States, when official birth certificates became common in the early 1900s, the number of people reported to be 110 or older dropped by up to 82 per cent.
He adds that mistakes in birth records or even pension fraud could explain the claims meaning many cases of extreme old age may not have been real.
In Caterham’s case, her age is supported by proper records, and she may well be 116 years old.
Source: ABC/BBC
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