A 120-year-old centenarian or an official's mistake?
The oldest person on the planet may be a resident of an Arab village in Israel. According to the archives of the Israeli Interior Ministry, she was born in 1888 and will soon celebrate her 120th birthday.
An elderly woman living in the village of Cizr al-Zarqa in the vicinity of Hadera appealed to the local branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a request to issue her a new passport to replace the lost one. After checking archival data, Israeli officials discovered that the woman was born in 1888.
"She came by herself, accompanied by her great-great-granddaughter, who acted as an interpreter. With the exception of minor hearing problems, she looked perfectly healthy," Interior Ministry employee Moshe Hazut told reporters.
Currently, 114-year-old US resident Edna Parker is officially considered the oldest person on the planet. Since the new alleged record holder wished to keep her name a secret, she is unlikely to try to take the place of honor of the American.
However, according to Hazut, the archived data may be erroneous. The fact is that the Arab centenarian was born during the Ottoman rule, when the accounting of the population of Palestine was conducted extremely carelessly.
Source: 120 year-old woman files for identity card – Ynetnews.com , 12.02.2008
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13.02.2008