Maria Branyas Morera, the world's oldest person, dies at age 117

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 209 points – Maria Branyas Morera, the world's oldest person, dies at age 117
abcnews.go.com

A woman classified by Guinness World Records as the oldest person in the world died on Aug. 19 at the age of 117, her family confirmed to The New York Times.

According to Guinness World Records, Maria Branyas Morera died in Spain at the Residència Santa María del Tura nursing home in Olot, Catalonia, where she has lived since 2000.

Guinness World Records passed on the title of "oldest woman living" to Branyas Morera when Lucile Randon, a nun also known as Sister André, died in 2023 at the age of 118.

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At two moments of time you are either the last person to be born or the last person to die.

Also, everyone is the youngest person alive at some point. Not everyone gets to be the oldest person alive.

Those people get the Weekend at Bernie's treatment.

That’s actually not true. It’s basically semantics on when you consider a person born but technically a twin that remains in the womb while the other is birthed is always younger than their sibling. 🤓 ☝️

Well... So the first one birthed is the youngest person alive for at least some fraction of a second, and when the other twin is born, they'll also be youngest alive for a second.

I would argue a baby in the womb 9 months is just as alive as a baby outside of it. Whether they are in the womb or not they are both alive.

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So, she went through the Civil War and probably remembers a little bit of that... Wow.

Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, so she would have been 32.

It was in the lead-up to WWII so it's not that crazy since we have a handful of WWII vets alive today. Technically, one of my remaining grandparents is old enough to remember hearing about it, at least.

Amazing. I heard she also held the record for the youngest person alive at one time.

What does "caress the Fairy" mean?!

It's what google translating the Catalan "acaronar a la Fada" gets you. I don't speak Catalan (or even any other language of Spain), so I can't really offer a proper explanation, but the capitalised "la Fada" in the original post suggests to me that it might be a reference to the folktale La Fada Morgana or some other cultural touchstone

We also use the article for personal names, might as well be a cat or dog.

Now the oldest person is Tomiko Itooka, who's currently 116 years, 90 days old.

23 years in a nursing home? Damn...

Edit: That would have cost multiple lifetimes retirement savings in the US.