The New Oldest Person in the World: 114 Years 3 Months and 25 Days OldAn American woman, following the death of the Japanese record holder, also a woman |
By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
15th of August 2007, 17:51 GMT
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The oldest person in the world, the Japanese Yone Minagawa, died on Monday evening, at the age of 114, according to AFP. She was the holder of the Guiness Book Record as the oldest living human. Now her title is attributed to the American woman Edna Parker, younger than Minagawa by 3 months and 16 days,
born on 20 of April, 1893.
The Japanese agency Kyodo has announced that Yone Minagawa, born on the 4 of January 1893, died of age related issues in an asylum in Akaike, Fukuoka Prefecture, southern Japan. She had become the oldest person in the world on January 30, following the death of Emma Faust Tillman, a 114-year-old American, but her state was relatively precarious: she moved in a motorized wheelchair and did not hear well.
Parker was born on the same day as silent movie star Harold Lloyd. She had became the oldest living American in February 2007 after the death of Corinne Dixon Taylor who lived in Washington D.C.
Born in Morgan County, Indiana, Parker got a teaching certificate at Franklin College in 1911. She married her husband, Earl Parker, in 1913. She has outlived her husband (who died in 1938) and her two sons, and she has 5 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren, and numerous great-great-grandchildren.
Currently, she lives in a retirement community in Shelbyville, Indiana, and unlike Minagawa, Parker still has a good health and can walk. In the same retirement center lives Sandy Allen, the tallest woman in the world.
Still, Japan detains the world record of average longevity, with about 28.000 persons aged over 100. This is put on the healthy alimentation and quality medical care. Japan possesses one of the longest average life spans, 85.3 years for women and 78.3 for men, and the world's oldest man is also a Japanese, Tomoji Tanabe, 111 years old, born September 18, 1895.
The world's absolute longevity record is detained by the French woman Jeanne Calment, which died in 1997, aged 122.
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