Women to Remember
Mitoya Kawate
Japan, 10-31-2003
New world's oldest living person is 114.
114
year old Mitoya Kawate, 2003
Mitoyo Kawate lies on a bed in this undated but recent photo in Hiroshima, western Japan. Kawate, a 114-year-old woman, born on May 15, 1889 – just 25 days after Adolf Hitler and in the same year that the Eiffel Tower was completed, has become the world's oldest living person after Kamato Hongo, who at 116 yrs and 45 days old, was born in 1887 and died Friday, Oct. 31, 2003.
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Kamato
Hongo 09/16/1887 - 10/31/2003 |
| The
world's oldest living person, Kamato Hongo, seen here in September 2003,
died of pneumonia at the age of 116 years, with her sense of humor still
intact until her last days. |
Kamato Hongo, a Japanese woman believed to be the oldest living person in the world, is shown in this photo taken on Sept. 9, 2003, six days before turning 116-years-old. She received an official Guinness World Record certificate to congratulate her on her birthday. Hongo died Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 of pneumonia, in the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima. She was 116 yrs and 45 days old.
Born September 16, 1887, Kamato Hongo was raised on a small rural island in southern Japan. She married and tended a farm for most of her life.
In 2002, the Guinness Book of World Records named her the oldest person in the world. The distinction earned her fame that was only compounded by her odd habit of sleeping for two days and then remaining awake for two days.
During her lifetime, Kamato
Hongo bore 7 children, and had 27 grandchildren, 57 great grandchildren and
11 great great grandchildren. She attributed her longevity to viewing life with
an optimistic attitude.
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Jeanne Louise Calment 02/21/1875 - 08/04/1997 |
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Jeanne Louise Calment, was born in Arles, France on February 21, 1875. She was 14 when the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889. She once met Vincent Van Gogh in her father's shop and remembered selling art supplies to him. She married a distant cousin at the age of 21. Her only grandson died in 1963. Her genes may have contributed to her longevity as her father lived to the age of 94 and her mother to the age of 86.
She led an extremely active life, taking up fencing at 85 years old, and was still riding a bicycle at 100. She portrayed herself at the age of 114 in the film Vincent Et Moi, to become the oldest actress in film. She did another film, "Au-delà de 120 ans avec Jeanne Calment" in 1995 at the age of 120. Jeanne Calment also published a CD and a VCR tape titled "Maitresse du Temps." It is interesting to note that she gave up cigarettes when she was 120, not for health reasons but because she could no longer light up without asking for help.
Quotes attributed to Jeanne
Calment: In life, one sometimes makes bad deals.
Comments on the notary public, Andre-Francois Raffray, who purchased her apartment,
promising to pay $500 per month until Jeanne died. He paid twice the market
value for the apartment before dying in December of 1995.
Comments on her vision of the future on her 120th birthday:
I've been forgotten by
a good God. (or L'Oubliée de Dieu)
I've only got one wrinkle
and I'm sitting on it. (Je n'ai jamai eu qu'une seule ride et je suis assise
dessus.)
I'm a normal woman.
I am very brave and I'm
afraid of nothing.
I took pleasure when
I could. I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky.
Jeanne Louise Calment died at a nursing home in Arles, southern France on August
4, 1997. President Jacques Chirac once said Jean Calment was a little bit like
a grandmother to everyone in France.
The
Central Park Jogger - Trisha Meili's Story
On the evening of April 19, 1989, a young woman, out for her run in New York’s
Central Park, was bludgeoned, raped, sodomized and beaten so savagely that doctors
despaired for her life and a horrified nation cried out in pain and outrage. We’ve heard so much about the crime, yet know so little about the victim — a word, incidentally, she refuses to use.
Laleh
and Ladan Bijani
Gone, but not forgotten, we honor these two women who were Craniopagus conjoined
twins. They longed for individual lives and opted for separation surgery at
29 years old. Neither survived. They had an incredible will to live and love
for life. Laleh and Ladan were Iranian twin sisters who died July 2003, while
being separated in surgery at Singapore.
TwinStuff.com
Statisitics on Conjoined Twins - infants, kids, adults worldwide.
Other
Guinness World Book Records
General statistical records
information
