New York is officially home to the oldest person in the world, according to the Guinesss World Records. 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones was born July 6, 1899 in Alabama before she moved to New York—one of the most stressful places to live in, so props to her—in 1923, where she lives today in a East New York nursing home. She is one of two living people in the world who were born in the 1800s.
Daughter to Alabama sharecroppers and granddaughter to a former slave, Jones has worked as a housekeeper and used that money to create a scholarship fund for students at her former Alabama high school. She was married from 1928 to 1933, but doesn’t have any children. She does have over 100 nieces and nephews.
Jones is blind, nearly deaf, and doesn’t speak much, but she’s healthy, only taking medication for high blood pressure and a multivitamin daily alongside the bacon and eggs she eats for breakfast every day. She says she’s never drank or done drugs and cites getting a lot of sleep and not having a husband as reasons for her long life. Preach.
The oldest living person ever recorded according to Guinness was Jeanne Calment of France. She lived to be 122 years and 164 days old.
[via Animal New York]
