Saturday, April 29, 2017

The old oldest person and the new oldest person

I'm a couple weeks late on this, but I knew I would have to write about the death of Emma Morano, the last woman who was born in the 1800s: November 1899 in particular. She passed away over Easter weekend. A lot of the reports claimed she was the last person born in the 19th century, but the year 1900 was the last year of the 19th century, and the current oldest person in the world was born in March of that year. Of course, I understand the significance of the odometer rolling over: having someone alive who was born in a year beginning with a one-eight just seems like a bigger deal that someone with a one-nine. Nevertheless, we have two people still around who were born in 1900, the last year of the 19th century. And there's another interesting thing about the newest oldest person: she's from Jamaica, where she was born, and which was part of the British Empire at the time. So she's the last person alive who was a subject of Queen Victoria. Wow.

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