James Baquet

    Over the past year, I have written about people who were famous for being scientists, artists, writers, even filmmakers. Now let’s look at some people who were famous for more unusual reasons.

    According to the book and website the Guinness World Records, the oldest authenticated person ever was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment. Born Feb. 21, 1875, she died Aug. 4, 1997, at the amazing age of 122 years and 164 days.

    True, there are reports of people living longer. The Bible says that a man named Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, but this is hardly what we can call authenticated!

    Apart from her great age, Mrs. Calment was quite a character. As the Guinness article points out, she was born 15 years before the first movie was made. Yet, near the end of her life (at age 114) she became the oldest actress ever to appear in a film. In “Vincent and Me” (1990), she plays herself, and talks about the time when she was 12 or 13 and sold canvasses to Vincent Van Gogh himself. She said of him, “He was ugly as sin, had a vile temper and smelled of booze...”

    Through most of her life she enjoyed sports, including swimming, tennis, roller-skating and cycling (which she stopped at age 100). She began fencing at age 85. Although she ate well and drank only moderately, surprisingly, she started smoking at 21, and only quit at 117.

    She walked on her own until age 115, when she broke a femur, after which she needed a wheel chair. She lived on her own until she was 110, when she moved into a nursing home.

    The most interesting part of her story was about a lawyer named Raffray who set up a “reverse mortgage” on her apartment. This means that when she was 90, he began paying her monthly payment, with the agreement that when she died, he could sell the apartment to recover his money and whatever additional value the apartment had.

    Alas for poor Monsieur Raffray! Mrs. Calment outlived him by several years, and his heirs had to keep paying on the apartment. At the time of her death, the family had paid more than double the apartment’s value.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. slang for “alcohol”

    2. payment on a house

    3. awful, terrible

    4. French for “mister”

    5. proven, verified

    6. people who inherit one’s property

    7. fighting with lightweight swords

    8. large bone in the thigh

    9. most, least, biggest, smallest, etc.

    10. surfaces for painting