Posted on 06/15/2004 12:04:42 PM PDT by freepatriot32
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
I'll be damned if that doesn't look like Geena Davis at the end of Beetlejuice.
she doesnt look a day older than 105.
maybw geena is one of her 100 desendents :-)
Helen Thomas is older
I thought this was bs, untill I saw her picture.
I rather doubt that age difference.
The secret to long life is eating tobacco?
"Musulmani comes from a Shi'ite Muslim farming family."
One need only read this far to know it's a scam.
What does that mean she stopped eating years ago? I have heard that people who eat just enough not to starve themselves lives much longer. Any truth to this?
I'm hoping to keep it all together and make 60 someday.
Sounds like Lebanese baloney.
Oh give me a break already!
First Ellen Degeneras...
Then Rosie O'Donnell...
Now Hamida Musulmani...
I don't care what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms...but I wish they would stop trying to force it down our throats.
Please, enough with all these Lebanese women.
I also think that sounds dubious.
When the last of her teeth went.
Well, even if it turns out to be baloney, we can at least give her the consolation prize of being the oldest looking woman on earth.
I'm less amazed at her age than that she lived to adulthood in Lebanon.
A woman who is 126 -- and still works on a farm?? Okay, it might be true.
A Lebanese who survived every single one of the war of the twentieth century?? Okay, it might be true.
A Shiite Muslim telling the truth?? How gullible do you think I am?
Na, just uglier.
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