It Smells Like Bullshit to Me

Today's big "scandal" is a report that French supercententarian Jeanne Calment, the woman who has long been considered the oldest person to have yet lived when she died at age 122 in 1997, was actually a fraud.  She supposedly added 23 years to her age because, according to the report, she was in reality her daughter Yvonne rather than Jeanne.  Her daughter died in 1934, but according to these muckrakers or buckrakers, it was Jeanne who actually died that year.  According to these "researchers," Yvonne, who allegedly adopted her mother's name, in reality lived to a mere 99 years of age.

Call me extremely cynical here.  There are numerous experts who studied Calment who insist her super advanced age was for real.

The report, by a pair of Russians seeking to debunk Calment's claims, is here.  Their claim lies in the theory the fraud was perpetrated in order to avoid inheritance taxes.

The Russians really have a lot of room to talk when it comes to fraud and supercentenarians.  Recall, if you were around then, the old USSR and its bragging about how long people lived under communism, especially old people in the republic of Azerbaijan.  Literally dozens if not hundreds of people were claimed to have lived to be over 100, far above the country's average life expectancy, let alone the rest of the world, with the most absurd claim made for Shirali Muslimov, who died in 1973, at allegedly 168 years of age.  These claims have long since been debunked.

Video clip of Muslimov:



Given how mobile he was in the clip and given how he looked, I seriously doubt he was even in his 90s then.  At most he was in his early 90s.  His wife was probably near his own age.

From the first linked article about Calment:

Meanwhile, Jean-Marie Robine, the French gerontologist who helped validate Jeanne Calment’s extreme age in the 1990s, is dismissing the age-faking theory as nonsense.

“All of this is incredibly shaky and rests on nothing,” he said, according to the National Post.

While researching Jeanne Calment’s claim she was born in 1875, Robine said, he and a colleague made sure to ask her questions that only she would know the answer to, such as the name of her mathematics teacher.

“Her daughter couldn’t have known that,” he said.

Robine is also skeptical that a lie of that magnitude could be kept secret for more than 80 years.

“Do you have any idea how many people would have needed to lie?” Robine said. “One day Fernand Calment starts passing off his daughter as his wife and everyone keeps quiet about it? It’s preposterous.”

I take the Russians' claim with a giant grain of salt.

Etc.

I didn't even know about this law or regulation.

It appears thousands upon thousands of companies are flouting this law to use convictions as a weeding tool of applicants.
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Robin Gibb of Bee Gees fame has come out of his coma and is talking with family members.

Let's hope he recuperates from his latest health problems.
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Jiroemon Kimura, the world's oldest man, celebrated his 115th birthday and looks terrific:



From Wikipedia:

Jiroemon Kimura (Japanese: 木村 次郎右衛門 Kimura Jirōemon, born 19 April 1897) is a Japanese supercentenarian who, at the age of 115 years, 3 days, is the world's oldest living man, since the death of Walter Breuning on 14 April 2011. Being 113 years 360 days at the succession, Kimura is the oldest man ever to gain the title of oldest living man. He is the oldest living person in Japan and in Asia
since the death of Chiyono Hasegawa on 2 December 2011, and the last living person in Asia born in 1897. Kimura is the first man to be Japan's oldest living person since Denzo Ishizaki, who held the title in the spring of 1999. Kimura has been the oldest living man in Japan since the death of Tomoji Tanabe on 19 June 2009,[1] and the oldest Japanese and Asian man ever since surpassing Yukichi Chuganji on 26 October 2011. He is one of only three men verified to have reached age 115.

Kimura is currently the 3rd oldest verified living person in the world, the 3rd oldest man ever recorded, the 3rd oldest undisputed Japanese and Asian ever, and one of the 30 oldest people in history. He is the last known living man who was verifiably born before the year 1900. Since the death of Delma Kollar on 24 January 2012, he is one of only two people (the other being Dina Manfredini) remaining in the world who were born in 1897.

Obituaries

The world's oldest person, Gertrude Baines, has died at the age of 115:

He said two days before her death she had been "in excellent shape".

"She was mentally alert. She smiled frequently," he said.

Ms Baines, whose father was once a slave, was believed to be the oldest ever African-American voter when she cast her ballot for US President Barack Obama in November 2008.

She said she was voting for him "because he's for the coloured people".

She celebrated her 115th birthday in April and received a letter of congratulations from Mr Obama.

Kama Chinen of Japan now is the title holder of oldest person in the world.
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Writer and producer Larry Gelbart, 81, best known for his work on the M*A*S*H television series, of cancer.
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Miscellaneous

A kind person decided to pay a lot of money to keep this puppy from being exploited in a freak show.

The puppy's extra leg will be surgically removed.
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With the death of Henry Allingham of Britain Saturday, Montana man Walter Breuning is now the world's oldest living man.

He will be 113 in September.

There is also some video at the link. He's sharper than people half his age.
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The astronauts of the Apollo 11 moon landing said Obama should aim for manned exploration to other places, including Mars.
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Obituaries

The world's oldest man and one of the last World War I veterans, Henry Allingham of Britain, has died at the age of 113.

He was one of the first members of the British Royal Air Force.

Details:

Mr Allingham is survived by Harry Patch, who turned 111 last month and is now one of the last two British survivors of WWI.

Speaking from Fletcher House care home in Wells, Somerset, Mr Patch said he was "very sad at losing a friend".

The other British survivor is Claude Choules, aged 108, who served with the Royal Navy.

Born in Worcestershire, he stayed in Australia after he was seconded there in the 1920s as an instructor to the Royal Australian Navy.

There is video at the link.
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More Obituaries

Europe's oldest person, Lucia Lauria of Italy, has died at the age of 113.

She was considered the oldest living person in continental Europe.

A Frenchwoman, Eugenie Blanchard, is actually several weeks older than Lauria, but lives in Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France in the Caribbean.

The crown of oldest living person in Europe now passes to an Englishwoman, 113-year-old Florrie Baldwin, who was born on March 31, 1896, according to a ranking compiled by the Gerontology Research Group.

The oldest living person in the world is American Gertrude Baines, who is aged 115.

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TV pitchman Billy Mays, 50, was found dead in his Florida home.
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Obituaries

I didn't see the death in November of Indiana's Edna Parker, who was the world's oldest person at 115.

Her successor, Portuguese woman Maria de Jesus, has died at the age of 115.

Gertrude Baines, 114, of Los Angeles, is now the oldest person in the world.

More:

There are now only 82 women and nine men verified as being 110 or older, according to gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles.

But he said there could be hundreds more in places such as China, India or Africa where they would not have caught the attention of the Gerontology Research Group, a small volunteer organization that tracks supercentenarians and verifies their birth dates through birth certificates and other documents.

Coles said the supercentenarians appear to share one trait that might account for their longevity — they come from families whose members are long-lived.

"Whether they drink alcohol or not, it doesn't matter. Whether they smoke cigarettes or not doesn't seem to matter," he said. "The thing that does seem to matter is that they chose their parents wisely."

"It's in the genes. It's in the DNA," he said.

Miscellaneous.

Edna Parker of Indiana, the oldest living person in the world, will be 115 Sunday.

Some theories about longevity:

Fifteen years later, her room at the Heritage House Convalescent Center in Shelbyville, Ind., about 25 miles southeast of Indianapolis, is adorned with teddy bears and photos of her five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great grandchildren. She's outlived her two sons, Clifford and Earl Jr.

During a visit this week, Parker was captivated by a new album of photos and documents from her life that Don's wife, Charlene, had assembled.

"That's the boys," she said hoarsely, tapping a photo of her two late sons in their youth. "Clifford and Junior."

Her two sisters also are deceased. Georgia lived to be 99, while her sister Opal was 88 when she died.

Parker's long-lived sisters are typical of other centenarians, according to Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Institute for Aging Research in New York. Nearly all of them have a sister, mother or other relative who lived a long life, he said.

"Longevity is in the family history," Barzilai said.

Edna's as ready as she'll ever be.
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Obituaries.

Lazare Ponticelli, the last French foot-soldier of World War I, died on March 12 at the age of 110.

His age qualifies him for the supercentenarian list, those people who have lived to 110 or older. There are close to 1,000 confirmed (and disputed) cases, and many more that have not been verified.

And there are those who were once considered verified, such as Japan's Shigechiyo Izumi, who supposedly died at age 120 years of age in 1986, but the claim has since been discounted if not debunked by scholars (Guinness World Records still has him as the second-longest living person). It is believed he was born in 1880 instead of 1865 and was named after an older brother who died previously and hence the confusion over the year of his birth. He apparently died at the age of "only" 105 and not 120.

Coincidentally, I have been websurfing about supercentenarians, and it makes for interesting reading. Here is a list of them, from Jeanne Calment's 122 years down to the dozens who lived to or are currently 110 years old.

Indiana's Edna Parker, who I have mentioned on a blog post or two, is the current world record holder of living supercentenarians at over 114 years of age.

No doubt the increase in numbers has to do with improved medical care, but also there is little doubt there is an increase because of better recordkeeping such as birth certificates, baptismal records, census records, and better research into individual cases. Usually cases of people born before 1870 are discounted because of the lack of records proving their age (although there are a number of verified cases).

As of now, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which monitors supercentenarians, there are 77 supercentenarians worldwide, with 66 women and 11 men. This is the current list as of yesterday.

This footnote is interesting:

The total number Supercentenarians that we have cited above has been frequently been misconstrued in the news media as representing every single person in the world aged 110 and over. The actual estimated number of worldwide living Supercentenarians is more likely to be between [300 - 450] persons. For the USA, we predict something like [60 - 75] Supercentenarians. While the total number of validated cases cited above is only about ten percent of the suspected real-world total, it should also be noted that the bulk of the true Supecentenarians actually fall between [110 - 113] years old; hardly any ever survive to live past 115. {Our estimate of [300 - 450] persons is based on a survival percentage of centenarians-to-age-110 to be between [0.15 - 0.25] percent.}

It should be noted that a significant majority of worldwide claimants to be age 110-or-over have subsequently been proven to be false; these individuals and more often their family or friends have their own personal motives for claiming these persons and, we are sad to report, are occasionally disingenuous (not well-intentioned).

We believe that the increasing number of true cases that we have observed during the last 30 years are the result of at least two factors:
(1) the diligence of our own committee members throughout the world who deserve much of the credit; and
(2) far more persons are reaching 110 than ever before. That is, people who were dying at [105 - 109] are now reaching [110 - 113] years of age.
Please note that the SSA data show that both of these reasons are major factors, and that it would be incorrect to ascribe all of the increase to an actual increase in longevity or all of the increase due to better record-keeping. Coming in the next few months, an SSA Report, along with our own historical databases, will better show how much of the increase can be ascribed to each of these two factors.

Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana, celebrated her 114th birthday on Friday. She is the oldest person in the United States and the second-oldest person in the world.

Yesterday Parker was visited by fellow Hoosier Bertha Fry of Muncie. Fry is 113 years old, and the meeting of the two set a new record.

As you can see from the first link, the convalescent center where Parker lives is also home to the world's tallest woman, Sandy Allen. (Dayla Thurston, Shelbyville Times)