She was born when Garfield was President of the United States. When she turned 18, the year was 1898. She has lived in three centuries, given birth to ten children. She was a mature 65 year old women at the time of the Battle of Iwo Jima. As things stand, she could out-live Abraham for revolutions around the sun.
Yesterday, The Associated Press reported that an elderly woman living in a small, wooden shack in rural southern Brazil, and the mother of fourteen children, could be the world’s oldest living woman. 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, whom Cadari described as “mentally sound and rational,” was married twice and has outlived all but three of her 14 children—four of them adopted.