She saw the Titanic sink and the end of World War I. Now, the oldest American just turned 115
She saw the Titanic sink and World War I end. Now, the oldest American has turned 115
Not going to lie. 115 years as a black woman in the deep south sounds like Hell
On the other hand, think of how many racist pieces of shit that treated her badly in her life that she outlived.
Yeah. A bigger deal than the titanic is that she most likely met people who fought for the south in the Civil War. It ended in 1865, only 44 years before she was born. An 18 year old soldier in the civil war would have been about 62 when she was born. They would have been old men, but she probably ran into a few of them in her life.
Aside from that, the Tulsa Race Massacre would have happened when she was a pre-teen. Her teenage years would have been filled with countless stories of lynchings. Then she would have had to deal with the great depression in her 20s, then WWII in her 30s.
She puts my teeth to shame. How do I get a smile like that? 😁
Elizabeth Francis says the key to living a long life is to ‘speak your mind and don’t hold your tongue’
We should respect our elders!
Title made me think she was on one of the life boats and saw the titanic sank.
As my 90+ YO (now dead) aunt put it to me, "90 is enough!". She lived on her own and was relatively healthy right up to the end, but had no fairy-tale beliefs about the joys and virtues of extreme old age. I once asked her, after she made such a proclamation, why anyone who, like her, wasn't put away in an old folks home or suffering from illness/injury would prefer The End arrive, and she said "there's just so much you can't do anymore". I took that to mean a) activities that you are newly physically incapable of (say, rock climbing), b) activities that are now too difficult and/or dangerous (say, solo long-distance hiking), and c) activities and life-paths that are practically-speaking now closed off to you, like finding one's soul-mate, traveling the world w/same, getting an advanced degree, being hired-into and rising through the ranks of some admired org ... all the sort of stuff that might still seem perfectly possible in one's 20s/30s/40s/even 50s. I can see how even in the best of cases, the world slowly but surely crushing your dreams and closing you out of any potential joys could bring you around to the belief that '90 is enough'.
Did they have tv back then?
Television became available in crude experimental forms in the 1920s
So no, not really.
If you believe the story told by someone who claimed to know him in the documentary about him, Leon Theremin invented a form of closed-circuit color television in the 1920s.
My sister once asked my dad why old tv shows were in black and white and he told her it was because people used to not be able to see in color. He then told her that his mom couldn't see colors and it made my sister really sad for our grandmother.
The end.
Calvin's dad said the same thing
enthusiastic but sparse applause
Holy hell, that's way older than I want to be. From the thumbnail, she appears to be smiling, so good for her.
Headline is bullshit - she was no eye witness of the Titanic desaster.
I bet she wasn't in the rail car for the armistice either.
I bet she didn't literally see the signing of the Treaty of Versailles either. /s
You can be witness to world events without literally being there and looking at them with your eyes.
She was... she was the iceberg.
Prove she wasn't there!
https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivors/
And here for he to live long enough to vote in the first black female president and out live Trump.
She was at that Irish dance party tho, if you look real close you can see her in the back.