Jeanne Louise Calment (21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997) was a French supercentenarian and, with a documented lifespan of 122 years and 164 days, the oldest person ever whose age has been verified. Her longevity attracted media attention and medical studies of her health and lifestyle. She is the only person verified to have reached the age of 120 and beyond.
On 8 April 1896, at the age of 21, Jeanne married her double second cousin, Fernand Nicolas Calment (1868–1942).
Jeanne employed servants and never had to work; she led a leisurely lifestyle within the upper society of Arles, pursuing hobbies such as fencing, cycling, tennis, swimming, rollerskating, playing the piano, and making music with friends.
In 1942, her husband Fernand died, aged 73, reportedly of cherry poisoning.
World War II had little effect on Jeanne’s life. She said that German soldiers slept in her rooms but “did not take anything away”, so that she bore no grudge against them.
Calment claimed to reporters that she had met van Gogh at that time, introduced to him by her future husband in her uncle’s fabric shop. She remembered that van Gogh gave her a condescending look, as if unimpressed by her. She described his personality as ugly, ungracious, and “very disagreeable”, adding that he “reeked of alcohol”. Calment said that she forgave van Gogh for his bad manners.
Her husband introduced her to smoking, offering cigarettes after meals, but she did not smoke outside these post-meal occasions. Calment continued smoking in her elderly years until she was 117.
She enjoyed chocolate, sometimes indulging in a kilogram (2.2 lb) per week. After the meal, she smoked a cigarette and drank a small amount of port wine. In the afternoon, she would take a nap for two hours in her armchair, and then visit her neighbours in the care home, telling them about the latest news she had heard on the radio. At nightfall, she would dine quickly, return to her room, listen to music (her poor eyesight preventing her from enjoying her crosswords pastime), smoke a last cigarette and go to bed at 10:00 p.m. On Sundays, she went to Mass, and on Fridays she went to Vespers and regularly prayed to and sought help from God and wondered about the afterlife.
At 118 years, she could no longer hold a cigarette between her fingers, and became a fire hazard, so she stopped smoking. By then, she had smoked continuously for over 100 years, during which time she had outlived every member of her known family
The cherry kernels, accessible by chewing or breaking the hard-shelled cherry pits, contain amygdalin, a chemical that releases the toxic compound hydrogen cyanide when ingested. The amount of amygdalin in each cherry varies widely, and symptoms would show only after eating several crushed pits (3–4 of the Morello variety or 7–9 of the red or black varieties). Swallowing the pits whole normally causes no complications.
Calment’s father lived to the age of 94 and her mother to the age of 86. The longevity gene was apparent in her maternal family but she left no heir with her longevity gene. She was a widow for more than half a century. A dessert of spoiled preserved cherries killed her husband in 1942 at the age of 46, but Calment survived. Her only daughter died in 1934 at the age of 36 of pneumonia. After the death of her daughter Calment raised her grandson, who became a medical doctor and died in 1963 during a car accident.
A member of the LiveForever club, a Russian looking for western investors? Sounds totally legit….
The One Person to Beat the Reverse Mortgage Scam
In 1965, aged 90 and with no heirs left, Calment signed a life estate contract on her apartment with civil law notary André-François Raffray, selling the property in exchange for a right of occupancy and a monthly revenue of 2,500 francs (€380) until her death. Raffray died on 25 December 1995, by which time Calment had received more than double the apartment’s value from him, and his family had to continue making payments. She commented on the situation by saying, “in life, one sometimes makes bad deals”.
