As you may know, there is considerable suspicion that Jeanne Calment’s daughter assumed her mother’s identity on her death (decades before reaching a noteworthy age). Personally, I suspect that is the most likely scenario (partly because of the extreme difference between Calment’s supposed age on death and all the next oldest humans) but it will probably never be proved conclusively one way or the other. I think most sources do still credit her as the oldest human with documented evidence of age. It just may be that some of that documentation is incorrect.
Regardless of that, I agree with your main point - no doubt scientists continue to try and get to the bottom of why these supercentenarians survive where so many others don’t.
That’s what I thought, too, until I read this piece in The New Yorker in February. It pretty well debunks the claim. (IIRC, the entire town would have had to have been in cahoots with her all along, as she was a prominent citizen and they all knew her and her daughter.)
Incidentally, Jeanne Calment was also famous for selling her apartment at age 90 but retaining the right to continue living there until her death, and also receiving monthly payments from the buyer. He died before her, and by then she had received more than double the value in payments and his family was obligated to keep up the payments after he died.
Thank you for that - it seems to be an extremely thorough and well-researched article, probably the best we will ever get. In particular, I wasn’t aware that the theory of the mother/daughter switch wasn’t pushed until 2018, nor that the principles behind it seem to have the weight of evidence against them. As the article says, something extraordinary has happened - either a woman has lived significantly longer than anyone else, or there has been a town-wide conspiracy - only one of them is true. Based on that article, I’ve changed my opinion back to seeing the age as genuine.
I believe there have been similar “conspiracy” theories about Sarah Knauss, the worlds second oldest person who died at 119. Nothing proven though.
These stories of skepticism may be related to one longevity claim that was in fact debunked a number of years ago about a Japanese man who was accepted as “oldest person” for quite a while until it was determined he wasn’t 120 when he died but rather “only” 105.
I’ve seen this claim numerous times on ‘interesting fact’ sites which don’t back it up with any proof:
“Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of them would be equal to the weight of the entire Earth’s population.”
I know that neutron stars are extraordinarily dense and a better source I’ve found says that a teaspoon would way about a billion tonnes due to having a typical density of 1017 kg/m3.
I’ve worked out the weight of the human population assuming an average weight of 62kg: 470,828,000 tonnes.
So let’s change this to “twice the human population”.
I’m really curious. A single cigarette, all at once? Or did she stub it out and re-light it over the course of the day? If the former … when? First thing in the morning, or after day is done?
And in the version of Cinderella told in the Brothers Grimm, Cinderella’s slippers are gold, not glass.
That’s the version they used for the musical spectacular at Wonderland in 1909, and probably for the same reason MGM made Dorothy’s slipper ruby – they showed up better onstage.
The best kind of publicity for any supercentenarian is to “admit” bad habits that are associated with a shortened lifespan. Jeanne Calment may have been a smoker, but an extremely, almost cartoonishly restricted one. Dose makes the poison, even with tobacco.
The only ones I knew were the related glass and squirrel fur versions:
…the version that is now most widely known in the English-speaking world was published in French by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.[6] Another version was later published by the Brothers Grimm in their folk tale collection Grimms’ Fairy Tales in 1812.
The glass slipper is unique to Charles Perrault’s version and its derivatives; in other versions of the tale it may be made of other materials (in the version recorded by the Brothers Grimm, German: Aschenbroedel and Aschenputtel, for instance, it is gold) …. Some interpreters, perhaps troubled by sartorial impracticalities, have suggested that Perrault’s “glass slipper” (pantoufle de verre) had been a “squirrel fur slipper” (pantoufle de vair) in some unidentified earlier version of the tale, and that Perrault or one of his sources confused the words; however, most scholars believe the glass slipper was a deliberate piece of poetic invention on Perrault’s part.
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba are considered municipalities within the country of the Netherlands which itself is within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Meanwhile Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten are considered separate countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The first time I visited St Martin/Sint Maarten I didn’t realize Saba was easily visible on a completely clear day. Our first two days there was just enough haze that it totally obscured the island. On the third day I walked out onto our balcony and Saba scared the crap outa me. There was a huge island where there was just ocean before.
St. Pierre and Miquelon is a group of islands about 15 miles off the coast of Newfoundland (Canada). It returns a full member of the French National Assembly, contributes to the French Senate and Presidential elections and its people are guaranteed French citizenship, and they use the Euro. It covers 242 square kilometres (93 sq mi) of land and shores and has a population of 6,008 as of the March 2016 census.
@Senegoid taught me about the existence of “alternation of generations”. Which turns out to be a really cool / weird feature of plant reproduction.
We’re surrounded by the darn things, outnumbered by them, utterly dependent on their collective health, and yet I know so little about how they work. But I know more today than yesterday. Now to see if I can remember it past tomorrow.
I visited there a year and a half ago for one night. I’d seen it on the map and I just got curious enough to go - couldn’t find anyone to go with, so traveled by myself. Small and quaint, but really not that much there; one night was just about right. Though I left just as they were setting up for Bastille Day, which I’m sure is quite the local celebration.
So I got three stamps in my American passport that said that I entered France, left France the next day, and re-entered Canada. (It’s probably a little unusual for an American passport to get stamped for entry into Canada.)
