RIO DE JANEIRO — The world’s oldest person according
to Guinness World Records died in the early hours of Tuesday at age 114,
due to multiple organ failure, her family said. She would have turned
115 on July 9.
Brazilian Maria Gomes Valentim, known in her homeland
as “Grandma Quita,” had only been acknowledged to be the world’s oldest
person on May 18. Guinness World Records certified that she was 48 days
older than U.S. citizen Besse Cooper, who had until then been regarded
as the world’s oldest person.
Valentim was admitted into hospital Sunday in
Carangola, the town in the state of Minas Gerais, where she had been
born, with symptoms of pneumonia, said her great-granddaughter Tais
Nolasco.
Born in 1896, she attributed her longevity to a
healthy diet, including “a full roll of bread every morning with coffee,
fruit and the occasional milk with linseed,” according to Guinness
World Records. Till the end of her life, she could eat on her own, she
enjoyed spicy food and she indulged in the occasional glass of wine.
“Grandma Quita” was the oldest of six children, and
all her siblings died before her. She married at age 16, in 1913, and
she had only one child, who also died. Her husband died in 1946, and she
never remarried.
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