pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Nov 27, 2024 8:57:24 GMT
The oldest person lifespan seems to be getting lower while the average gets higher. Weren't there people living close to 120 a handful of year ago? Well, there was Jeanne "I met Van Goch, y'know" Calment - the oldest (properly) documented living person, who was 122 when she died in 1997 - the only person ever to hit 120. The next three were 119/119/118, and two of 'em died post-pandemic, so... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Oldest_people_(all_women)Thanks for the link. What I find most interesting is how little the figures have changed. Although life expectancy at a population level has increased enormously over the last century, the age of the oldest reliably documented woman and man has barely moved. There does seem to be a natural limit.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Nov 27, 2024 9:03:29 GMT
Yep, go around a lot of the old churchyards roun' by 'yer, and look at the headstones - even in the 17th/18th century, a good proportion of people made their 80s.
If you avoided all the now-easily-treatable stuff, then lifestyles back then had healthy diets, lots of exercise... It was the now-trivial stuff that took people en masse, like childbirth or minor lurgies or cut fingers...
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Post by mostlywrong on Nov 27, 2024 11:00:00 GMT
The oldest person lifespan seems to be getting lower while the average gets higher. Weren't there people living close to 120 a handful of year ago? I intend to live past my 103rd birthday. 2067 then. Having done that, I will attempt the world record for running 100 metres aged 103 and then die a happy man. Because I saw on TV the Japanese current record holder do it and he was practically walking. I read an article a few months ago that suggested that the reason for the fall in the number of really long lived people was better administration of the modern world: birth certificates, death certificates and pension payments.
The state has a vested interest in making certain that you are who you say you are, and that you are still alive when claiming that valuable pension at 120yo!
Keeping Grandad in the freezer whilst you claim his pension is no longer as easy as it once might have been.
MW
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Post by mostlywrong on Nov 27, 2024 11:04:33 GMT
Yep, go around a lot of the old churchyards roun' by 'yer, and look at the headstones - even in the 17th/18th century, a good proportion of people made their 80s. If you avoided all the now-easily-treatable stuff, then lifestyles back then had healthy diets, lots of exercise... It was the now-trivial stuff that took people en masse, like childbirth or minor lurgies or cut fingers... And then there was tuberculosis as more and more people followed the money and moved from the country into cramped slums in the cities where the work was.
Treatable now, if caught in time, but it was death sentence then.
MW
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Nov 27, 2024 17:26:21 GMT
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Post by captainconfident on Nov 27, 2024 18:42:54 GMT
Yep, go around a lot of the old churchyards roun' by 'yer, and look at the headstones - even in the 17th/18th century, a good proportion of people made their 80s. If you avoided all the now-easily-treatable stuff, then lifestyles back then had healthy diets, lots of exercise... It was the now-trivial stuff that took people en masse, like childbirth or minor lurgies or cut fingers... And then there was tuberculosis as more and more people followed the money and moved from the country into cramped slums in the cities where the work was.
Treatable now, if caught in time, but it was death sentence then.
MW
Yeah I saw a programme about smallpox and the eradication itof and, well, that disease was unspeakably cruel. So much utter misery. To live free of that is one of man's greatest achievements and if God created it, well what kind of mood was he/she in on that day?
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Post by bernythedolt on Nov 27, 2024 18:46:13 GMT
The oldest person lifespan seems to be getting lower while the average gets higher. Weren't there people living close to 120 a handful of year ago? I intend to live past my 103rd birthday. 2067 then. Having done that, I will attempt the world record for running 100 metres aged 103 and then die a happy man. Because I saw on TV the Japanese current record holder do it and he was practically walking. I read an article a few months ago that suggested that the reason for the fall in the number of really long lived people was better administration of the modern world: birth certificates, death certificates and pension payments.
The state has a vested interest in making certain that you are who you say you are, and that you are still alive when claiming that valuable pension at 120yo!
Keeping Grandad in the freezer whilst you claim his pension is no longer as easy as it once might have been.
MW
I can vouch for that, for pension companies at least. My grandmother lived to 103. For over 25 years, she received the commonplace 50% spousal benefit from her late husband's pension. On her 100th birthday celebration at her care home, I was surprised to see a rather dapper gentleman there, who introduced himself as being from this pension company, "...and we love to make a point of coming along to enjoy all these wonderful 100th birthday events"). He was very polite, fitted in comfortably with the celebration, feigning great interest in my grandmother's and her late husband's lives. It was obvious to me he was there to confirm the veracity of my grandparents' back story, which I guess is fair enough. Once satisfied, he made his excuses and left after an hour or so. Technically a gatecrasher, but he was so pleasant to everyone, including the birthday girl, that it would have been churlish to object.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Nov 27, 2024 19:15:56 GMT
...if God created it, well what kind of mood was he/she in on that day? So much that could be said about, of course. ...especially organised religion, and some of the antics of those within it. You'd think that, if the Abrahamic deity really was omniscient and omnipotent, then their first action would be to straighten the various sales departments, up/down the timeline and across each stop, as to which had it right - and stop them killing each other over it.
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Post by mostlywrong on Nov 27, 2024 19:48:04 GMT
I read an article a few months ago that suggested that the reason for the fall in the number of really long lived people was better administration of the modern world: birth certificates, death certificates and pension payments.
The state has a vested interest in making certain that you are who you say you are, and that you are still alive when claiming that valuable pension at 120yo!
Keeping Grandad in the freezer whilst you claim his pension is no longer as easy as it once might have been.
MW
I can vouch for that, for pension companies at least. My grandmother lived to 103. For over 25 years, she received the commonplace 50% spousal benefit from her late husband's pension. On her 100th birthday celebration at her care home, I was surprised to see a rather dapper gentleman there, who introduced himself as being from this pension company, "...and we love to make a point of coming along to enjoy all these wonderful 100th birthday events"). He was very polite, fitted in comfortably with the celebration, feigning great interest in my grandmother's and her late husband's lives. It was obvious to me he was there to confirm the veracity of my grandparents' back story, which I guess is fair enough. Once satisfied, he made his excuses and left after an hour or so. Technically a gatecrasher, but he was so pleasant to everyone, including the birthday girl, that it would have been churlish to object. None of my grandparents made it to 50yo.
TB (gassed in the war), TB, childbirth and alcoholism.
And Glasgow. Don't forget Glasgow...
MW
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Post by mostlywrong on Nov 27, 2024 19:55:11 GMT
The oldest person lifespan seems to be getting lower while the average gets higher. Weren't there people living close to 120 a handful of year ago? I intend to live past my 103rd birthday. 2067 then. Having done that, I will attempt the world record for running 100 metres aged 103 and then die a happy man. Because I saw on TV the Japanese current record holder do it and he was practically walking. I read an article a few months ago that suggested that the reason for the fall in the number of really long lived people was better administration of the modern world: birth certificates, death certificates and pension payments.
The state has a vested interest in making certain that you are who you say you are, and that you are still alive when claiming that valuable pension at 120yo!
Keeping Grandad in the freezer whilst you claim his pension is no longer as easy as it once might have been.
MW
I think the article I read was more about the scientists who were challenging the perceived wisdom that certain parts of the world (so-called blue zones, perhaps?) encouraged longevity.
Japan and Sardinia were amongst the locations that were mentioned, IIRC. The article suggested that once the scientists examined the data, there wasn't much evidence to support the theory.
MW
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Nov 27, 2024 20:47:07 GMT
None of my grandparents made it to 50yo. OTOH, my grandfather was born in the 19th century, and made it to 90. When I was a kid in the '70s, we had an elderly woman and her father as neighbours - she was made to stop "helping with the lunches for the old folk" at church when it was pointed out she was the oldest one there, while he hit 102 (IIRC) - he died in hospital after falling and breaking his hip in the kitchen at home... At his hundredth birthday, he told me that when he was my age, he remembered his grandmother telling him that when she was a little girl, she remembered seeing the victory bonfires for the Battle of Waterloo...
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Nov 28, 2024 18:13:03 GMT
RIP Shalom Nagar, who was the hangman who despatched Adolf Eichmann to meet his maker in 1962.
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