All these oldest persons ever do to get in the news is die :-/

Unless they appear in movies doing rapping.

Mrs Bolden had 40 grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren, 150 great-great-grandchildren, 220 great-great-great grandchildren and 75 great-great-great-great grandchildren.

Did she die after eating the 560 boxes of chocolates she received for her birthday?

Being visited by her 74 year old grandson!

You get to feel pretty smug/solipsistic.

I don’t know if I could put up with those jerks from the Guinness Book of Records ringing up every week asking, “you still alive, then?”

Things that happened the year she was born:

—Van Gogh shoots himself

—First electric chair execution

—First country cricket match

—Forth Bridge opens.

I hope I live till I’m 116.

you’ll get to start a thread called “trickle down politics” and talk about incontinence.

As the grandson of the world’s 71st-oldest person, I’ll pass on living that long myself, thanks. On the upside, she was able to work (nursing) until her late 90s, but the decline is long and wearing on the kids and grandkids.

My mother used to nurse Jessie Smith (one of the world’s oldest) who died in 1998 aged 110 or so. She used to point at pictures of the Queen Mother and say “It’s the Queen!” and also used to hold a toy soldier close to her calling it “my little boy” (no one knows why). All but one of her four children had died of old age, and apparently by the end of her years she was barely able to hear, talk, or even eat. I’d rather choose a death with my immediate family around me rather than be alienated both culturally and physically.

She *did* love Scooby Doo though.