Would any of you want to live this long?
Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 2:37 pm
Lebanese Woman Could Be World's Oldest
Census Documents List Woman's Birth Year as 1877, Making Her 126
Reuters
Musulmani holds 10-month-old Mohammed, her youngest descendant.
SHAITIYA, Lebanon (June 15) - A Lebanese woman who has documents saying she was born in 1877 -- making her at least 126 years old -- could be the oldest person in the world.
Hamida Musulmani, frail and wrinkled but still working on her family's farm in south Lebanon, showed Reuters this week a document from Lebanon's 1932 census which lists her birth year as 1877.
She feels well, she said, but complained of failing sight.
Local officials said her papers were authentic, although they date from a year when she would already have turned 55.
If the census papers are accurate, Musulmani would now be four years older than the oldest person officially documented -- a Frenchwoman who died seven years ago at the age of 122.
Musulmani comes from a Shi'ite Muslim farming family. Documents show her husband Ali was born in 1890, which would have made him 13 years younger than his wife. He died in 1960.
Musulmani said she had stopped eating meat many years ago. Though her family grows and dries tobacco, she does not smoke.
"I only eat what I grow," she said. "I am fine, it is only my eyes that cannot see properly."
She says she has about 100 descendants, the youngest of whom is 10 months old.
The world's longest-lived person with reliable documentation was Jeanne-Louise Calment of France, who died in 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
06/15/04 06:37 ET
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