December 11, 2006

Will you still need me when I'm 116? Today, the oldest living person died in a nursing home in Tennessee. At 116, Elizabeth Bolden was the last person remaining in America documented to have been born in 1890.

The Gerontology Research Group recognizes 78 supercentenarians (110 years or older). Now, meet the new record holder. At 115 years old, he becomes the first man to top the list in 20 years.

posted by Mickey 18 years ago
  • I hope I live to be that old...
  • 40 grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren, 150 great-great-grandchildren, 220 great-great-great grandchildren and 75 great-great-great-great grandchildren. Goddamn, that's a lot of cards with $5 bills in them. My sister-in-law's mother has 35 grandchildren, and she says she can't keep all their names straight. This lady must have had to use the Dewey decimal system.
  • Isn't it strange that most of the people who live to be over 100 are not rich. I mean, by now you'd expect to have one or two uber rich people who were able to "buy" longevity. Fucking science. You let me down once again.
  • Boggles the mind to think about the changes this granddame faced.
  • The article I linked to in an earlier thread about longevity called compound interest the "supreme weapon" of the gerontocratic elite. In theory, all old people should be rich if they invested so much as 10,000USD in their early twenties.
  • You forget about inflation. If a paperback book I bought brand new for 3 cents in the 1950s were to be re-printed now, it would probably sell for $6.99 or more. And the lunch I bought then for less than a dollar would run to ten or fifteen dollars now, USD. Behold, the marvelous ever-shrinking dollar!
  • I wondered about that, actually, but then started wondering about how anyone can have long-term savings plans, and pensions and retirement plans and so on, and figured that the savings somehow compensated for inflation... Then realized this is probably long and complicated, and left it at that.
  • In my early twenties, I was lucky to be able to buy food and medicine. $10,000 USD was more money than I could imagine.
  • Same here. And in my early thirties, I have to say that not a whole lot has changed... I think the point was made more for the mathematics of it than for its viability, though I imagine that go-getters on corporate payrolls could easily come up with 10,000 by their mid-twenties.
  • That kind of story is an excellent argument for handgun control. If that'd been here, they would've been packing and he'd be dead right now.