SAO PAULO, Brazil --An elderly woman living in a small, wooden shack in rural southern Brazil could be the world's oldest living woman, according to a Brazilian record-keeping organization.
Maria Olivia da Silva, who recently celebrated her 125th birthday, "is definitely the oldest living woman in Brazil and possibly in the entire world," said Iolete Cadari, administrative director of RankBrasil, this country's equivalent to the Guinness World Records.
Da Silva's birth certificate shows that she was born Feb. 28, 1880 in the city of Itapetininga, Sao Paulo state, Cadari said by telephone. She currently lives in the small town of Astorga, some 370 miles west of Sao Paulo in the state of Parana.
Laura McTurk, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records in London said by e-mail that the organization was researching its records for any information on da Silva. She said Guinness may have an official statement on Friday.
According to the Guinness World Records Web site, the world's oldest woman is 113-year-old Hendrikje Van Andel-Schipper, who was born June 29, 1890.
Didn't the greman bloke die very recently? Sure I read something somewhere ... he'd said the secret of his long life was having a glass of dark beer every day. Now, with the amount of beer I drink, I should get to ... oh, 170 or something ;-)
Didn't the greman bloke die very recently? Sure I read something somewhere ... he'd said the secret of his long life was having a glass of dark beer every day. Now, with the amount of beer I drink, I should get to ... oh, 170 or something ;-)
He died two days ago. He was not the oldest but the second oldest man.
EDIT: I posted this on rec.crafts.brewing yesterday..
The world's second-oldest man, who was briefly thought to be the oldest man alive, died yesterday, aged 111, his family in Dusseldorf said. Hermann Dornemann, an electrical engineer born on 27 May, 1893, said he stayed fit by drinking a glass of dark beer every day.
She lived to be over 122. I like the bit about her apartment.
There have been others who have produced birth certificates and baptismal certificates showing that they were older, but they could not be reliably confirmed:
//www.thedominican.net/articles/pampo.htm
