114 year old CA woman set to be crowned the world's oldest person

[draggar]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americ...nes/index.html

She's 114 - Born in 1894

She was born just 29 years after the end of the Civil War.
4 years before the Spanish-American War.
She was 20 at the start of WW1
She was 29 when the last remnant of the Roman Empire (Ottoman Empire) ceased to exist (renamed the Republic of Turkey).

She's seen what, almost 30 presidential terms
Utah (became a state Jan 4 of 1896), Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii were not states when she was born.

In 1896:
The X-Ray was first on exhibition the year she was born.
William McKinley became President
John Philip Sousa composed "The Stars and Stripes Forever"
George Burns was born on Jan 20th
Alfred Nobel died

Just imagine what she's seen in her life.

[persephone]

I would love to be able to sit down with her and just TALK to her. It seems that she is still very much aware and lucid and seems to remember a lot. I would love to pick her mind about so many things!

It's amazing what our bodies can do sometimes if we just take care of them and let them exist.

[Chazzie]

As impressive as it is to see someone that old...

It would be good to talk to nearly -any- senior citizen, I'd say. 70 year olds and up have plenty of stories too, I bet!

[persephone]

It would be good to talk to nearly -any- senior citizen, I'd say. 70 year olds and up have plenty of stories too, I bet!

I know. And I do. I've sat down with numerous "senior citizens" in our neighborhood, church, ect. and taped stories because once they're gone, we're going to lose some of the wisdom and insight and stories they have and I would hate for that to happen.

But this lady has real, cognizant, first hand memories of a lot of things most people alive today have only read about in books. And I think it would be fascinating to talk to her.