40 Fun Facts About Centenarians

Jeanne Calment, whose 122 years are the longest verified human lifespan, said she met which painter in Arles?

Vincent van Gogh lived in Arles in 1888 and 1889, when Calment was 13 and 14. She remembered that he gave her a condescending look, and said she forgave him for his bad manners.

In Britain, a 100th birthday can bring a congratulatory card, once sent as a telegram, from which figure?

The monarch has sent these greetings since 1908, when Edward VII's secretary congratulated a Lincolnshire clergyman on reaching his hundredth year. Another card follows at 105, and then one every year.

Which Japanese prefecture, where a 1945 battle destroyed most family registers, was named a longevity 'blue zone'?

Okinawa joined the blue zone list in 2005 for its many people aged 100 or more. Because its registers were rebuilt after the war, some researchers question how reliable those ages are.

Who became the first US president to live to 100, celebrating the birthday in October 2024 while in hospice care?

Jimmy Carter turned 100 on October 1, 2024, more than nineteen months after choosing hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia, so that he could spend his remaining time with his family.

Which British Army veteran raised over £30 million for the NHS by walking laps of his garden as he turned 100?

Tom Moore set out to raise £1,000 with a hundred laps behind his walking frame. More than 1.5 million people donated, and a charity single made him the oldest person to top the UK chart.

Which Golden Girls star died on New Year's Eve 2021, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday?

Betty White died at home in Los Angeles aged 99, days after a film marking her centenary was announced. It reached theatres on what would have been her 100th birthday.

French nun Sister André, who lived to 118, became the oldest known survivor of which illness weeks before turning 117?

COVID-19 reached her Toulon retirement home in January 2021, and she tested positive without showing a single symptom. She was reported to eat chocolate and drink a glass of wine every day.

Which cigar-smoking comedian, an Oscar winner at 80 for The Sunshine Boys, died weeks after his 100th birthday?

George Burns had a Caesars Palace contract that guaranteed a show on his 100th birthday, but when the day came he was too weak to perform. He smoked 10 to 20 cigars a day for most of his life.

Which star of Spartacus and Paths of Glory died in 2020 at the age of 103?

Kirk Douglas barely survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and suffered a severe stroke in 1996 that impaired his speech, then lived another 24 years.

What did notary André-François Raffray buy from Jeanne Calment in 1965, paying her monthly until he died first?

Her apartment came with a catch: Calment, then 90, kept the right to live there for life. Raffray died in 1995 having paid more than double its value, and his family had to keep paying.

Which songwriter of God Bless America and Cheek to Cheek skipped his own 100th-birthday gala at Carnegie Hall?

Irving Berlin did not attend the televised 1988 concert in his honour, and died the following year aged 101. He had assigned all royalties from God Bless America to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

Olivia de Havilland, who lived to 104, earned the first of her five Oscar nominations for which 1939 film?

Gone with the Wind cast her as gentle Melanie Hamilton, the part she wanted when most actresses were chasing Scarlett O'Hara. She moved to Paris in the 1950s and was made a dame two weeks before turning 101.

Which actress, Oscar-nominated for playing the 100-year-old survivor in Titanic, went on to reach 100 herself?

Gloria Stuart celebrated her 100th birthday in 2010 at a gallery party hosted by Titanic director James Cameron. She had been 86 when he cast her in the part.

Which British royal, widowed in 1952, became the first member of the royal family to live past 100?

The Queen Mother marked her 100th birthday with a parade and a Guildhall lunch, where the Archbishop of Canterbury accidentally tried to drink her glass of wine. She died in 2002 aged 101.

Which Nobel Peace Prize-winning former US secretary of state travelled to Beijing for talks weeks after turning 100?

Henry Kissinger turned 100 in May 2023 and was in Beijing that July, 52 years after his first, secret visit to confer with Zhou Enlai. He died that November.

Which American folk artist began painting in earnest at 78, after arthritis made embroidery painful, and lived to 101?

Grandma Moses was discovered when a collector spotted her pictures in a drugstore window and began pushing her work in New York City. Her pictures later went out on 16 million Christmas cards.

Which matriarch of an American political dynasty outlived four of her nine children and died in 1995 aged 104?

Rose Kennedy saw one son become president and two more become senators, and Pope Pius XII made her a papal countess in 1951. A stroke at 93 left her in a wheelchair for her last 11 years.

Which TV producer, creator of All in the Family, flew 52 combat missions in World War II and lived to 101?

Norman Lear also founded the advocacy group People for the American Way, and in the early 2000s he sent a 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence on a national tour.

Which wartime singer, known as the Forces' Sweetheart, became the first centenarian with an album in the UK charts?

Vera Lynn had just turned 100 when the 2017 album, on which younger artists duet with her archive recordings, entered the chart. At 92 she had already been the oldest artist to top it.

Which Italian island's mountain villages were the first place researchers marked as a longevity 'blue zone'?

Sardinia gave the idea its name when researchers marked its long-lived villages on a map with a blue pen. The cluster lay in the mountains of Nuoro province, where local men seemed to live longest.

Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who lived to 102, cycled home in 1943 after deliberately taking which drug he had created?

LSD was first synthesized by Hofmann in 1938, and his wobbly ride home is remembered every 19 April as Bicycle Day. Just before his 100th birthday he was still defending it and lamenting its prohibition.

Zhou Youguang, an economist who lived to 111, is credited as the father of which system for romanizing Chinese?

Pinyin was adopted by China in 1958 and by the United Nations in 1986. Zhou later helped translate the Encyclopaedia Britannica into Chinese, and he died one day after his 111th birthday.

Emma Morano of Italy, the last known person born in the 1800s, credited her long life to staying single and eating what?

Raw eggs were her daily staple, though she also admitted to an occasional glass of homemade grappa. Her 117th birthday party in 2016 was broadcast live in Italy.

Jonas Jonasson, author of the comic novel about a 100-year-old man who climbs out of a window, comes from which country?

Sweden made the book its best-selling title of 2010, and three million copies had sold worldwide by 2012. Its hero, Allan Karlsson, escapes his retirement home on the day of his hundredth birthday party.

Thomas Parr, the Englishman known as Old Parr and said to have lived 152 years, was buried in 1635 in which church?

Westminster Abbey took him on the orders of Charles I, who met Parr that year after an earl brought him to London as a curiosity. William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, performed the autopsy.

Which Today show weatherman, the original Ronald McDonald, began wishing viewers a happy 100th birthday on air in 1983?

Willard Scott made the birthday greetings a Today fixture that his successor, Al Roker, carried on. Two decades earlier he had created the McDonald's clown and played him in the first commercials.

What silver gift has Japan's government sent citizens who reach 100 since 1963, shrinking it in 2009 to cut costs?

A sake cup went to only 153 people in 1963. As the numbers climbed the cups were made smaller, and by 2014 more than 29,000 people qualified in a single year. Each comes with a letter from the prime minister.

Which country's president sends citizens who reach 100 a letter and a cash gift called a bounty?

Ireland pays the Centenarians' Bounty, worth more than 2,500 euros, even to citizens who have settled abroad.

Which Asian country's Centenarians Act of 2016 gives citizens who reach 100 a cash gift and a letter from the president?

The Philippines pays the gift of 100,000 pesos through its social welfare department, and the law covers Filipinos living overseas as well as those at home.

What term do demographers use for a person who has reached 110, a mark only about one in 1,000 hundred-year-olds hit?

Supercentenarian has been in use since at least 1832, and at first it meant anyone well past 100. A semisupercentenarian is aged between 105 and 109.

Which British-born comedian, named an honorary veteran by Congress after 57 USO tours, died weeks after turning 100?

Bob Hope reached his 100th birthday 59 days before he died in 2003. He had spent half a century entertaining troops overseas, from 1941 to 1991.

Which star of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang celebrated his 100th birthday in December 2025?

Dick Van Dyke saw the day marked by one documentary in cinemas and another on PBS. In Mary Poppins he played two parts: Bert the chimney sweep and the elderly chairman of the bank.

Fauja Singh, who took up running seriously at 89, finished which event in Toronto in 2011 at a claimed age of 100?

A marathon took him 8 hours 11 minutes, three days after he set eight age-group records in a single afternoon. Guinness never ratified the feat, because he had no early birth documents.

Which Greek island, where about one in three people is said to reach their 90s, is counted as a 'blue zone'?

Ikaria takes its name from Icarus, who by tradition fell into the sea nearby and was buried on the island. A 2011 study of the islanders' way of life looked for what lay behind their long lives.

Loma Linda, California, was labelled a 'blue zone' largely because of which religious group's health practices?

Adventists make up nearly half of the city's residents, and their church runs its university and medical centre. A 2008 book about places where people live longest credited their diet and health habits.

Which National Geographic writer popularised 'blue zones' in a 2005 cover story and later a Netflix series?

Dan Buettner also holds three Guinness records for long-distance cycling, one of them for a ride from the north of Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina.

Which senator, who once filibustered for more than 24 hours, became the first member of Congress to turn 100 in office?

Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in a failed attempt to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He retired in 2003 as the oldest-serving senator and died less than six months later.

Which scientist, who built a wartime laboratory in her bedroom, became in 2009 the first Nobel laureate to reach 100?

Rita Levi-Montalcini was feted with a party at Rome's City Hall. Her bedroom studies of chicken embryos in Turin led to the discovery of nerve growth factor, which won her a Nobel Prize in 1986.

Architect Oscar Niemeyer, who died in 2012 aged 104, designed the cathedral and congress of which planned capital city?

Brasília became Brazil's capital in 1960, by which time Niemeyer had designed all of its main civic buildings. He also worked with other architects on the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Which Englishman, dubbed the Last Fighting Tommy, was the last surviving soldier of the First World War trenches?

Harry Patch was a plumber from Bath who was wounded at Passchendaele in 1917 and died in 2009 aged 111. At 106 he met a veteran who had fought on the German side in the same battle.