This is one of my favorite series, and one of yours too. Our episodes on the longest-lived people are some of our most popular. What I do is present the list of the longest-lived people of all time. I’ll also go into detail on any new additions to the list.
We’re talking specifically about the people who have lived the longest, with documented proof. I’ll give you the whole list, talk about what’s changed since last year, and ask some questions. What can we learn from the lives of this list of the royalty of longevity?
A person who lives past 110 is called a super-centenarian. All of the top 10 fall into that category. They are also all women.
I’ll give you the list of longest-lived people, but first I want to ask a few questions to help us think about what we could learn from this.
First, what was the quality of life of these people during those “extra” years? The life expectancy of a woman born in 1921 was 60.
For someone my age it was 68. What was life like after they reached that average age, in the final years?
Second, living to be over 100 is still very rare. Though some estimates say that children born today have a 33% chance of living to be 100. But for someone born in 1919, that actual survival rate is a lot less. According to Dan Buettner in a Ted Talk from 2013, only about 1 in 5000 in the US live to be 100. Since this is such a small number of us, is anything about their lives relevant to the rest of us?
These are some questions we’ll keep in mind as we go through the list. Which I’ll now outline for you.
Number 10 on the list of people with the highest verified age, and new this year, Lucile Randon, aka Soeur Andre, born in 1904 and still living, age 116 years, 354 days (1-30-21).
9. Misao Okawa, of Japan, who lived from 1898 to 2015, 117 years, 27 days. She moves up from number 10 due to the removal of Lucy Hannah, which I’ll discuss later.
8. Chiyo Miyako, also Japanese, 1901 to 2018, total age 117 years, 81 days. Moved up from number 9 last year.
7. Emma Morano, of Italy, 1899 to 2017, 117 years, 137 days.
6. Violet Brown, from Jamaica, lived 1900 to 2017, 117 years, 189 days.
5. Marie-Louise Meilleur, Canadian, lived 1880 to 1998, 117 years, 230 days.
4. Nabi Tajima, Japan, 1900-2018, 117 years, 260 days. Down from #4 last year.
3. Kane Tanaka, born 2 January 1903, 118 years, 28 days (1-30-21).
2. Sarah Knauss, US, 1880-1999, 119 years, 97 days.
1. Jeanne Calment, France, 1875-1997, 122 years, 164 days.
So Kane Tanaka stayed alive and moved all the way up to #3, the oldest living person and one of only 3 people to exceed 118 years of age, and the first person to reach 118 in over 20 years.
Missing from this year’s list is Lucy Hannah, previously listed as the 3rd longest-lived person, the only African-American, and one of only two on the list from the United States. So what happened to Lucy Hannah? Well, new information came to light that indicates that she was twenty years younger at her death than we thought. The details are not terribly interesting. If you’d like to read them, there is a link in the show notes to the report from the book Exceptional Lifespans, with a very recent update on supercentenarian documentation. And if you’d like to know more about Lucy Hannah, check out episode 167 of the podcast.
The list consists entirely of women. The man who lived the longest? Jiroemon Kimura still holds that record. He lived 116 years, 54 days. The oldest living man is Saturnino de la Fuente of Spain, at 111. The average woman can still expect to live as much as five years longer than the average man.
Of course, I’m only looking to make it to 120. It’s already been done, so shouldn’t be a big deal.
Next episode, I’ll tell you more about our new addition to the list this year, 116-year-old Lucile Randon. I’ll also have an episode on how COVID-19 is affecting longevity.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-49970-9_22
https://web.archive.org/web/20200604162428/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Sex_differences