Jeanne Louise Calment biography at QuotationFun

A Short Biography of Jeanne Louise Calment

Author Name:

Jeanne Louise Calment

Born As:

Jeanne Louise Calment

Other Names:

Born:

21 Feb 1875

Died:

04 Aug 1997




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Jeanne Calment has the longest confirmed lifespan in history at 122 years and 164 days.

Was the last person living to have met the artist Vincent van Gogh.

Entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1988, and on 17 October 1995 was declared the oldest person who had ever lived, having surpassed Shigechiyo Izumi of Japan.

Jeanne Louise Calment lifespan has been thoroughly documented by scientific study, with more records having been produced to verify her age than for any other case.

Jeanne Louise Calment's older brother, François, lived to the age of 97, her father to 93, and her mother to 86.

Jeanne Louise Calment outlived her daughter and grandson.

In 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal to sell her former apartment to lawyer André-François Raffray, on a contingency contract. Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs until she died, an agreement sometimes called a "reverse mortgage". Raffray ended up paying Calment more than the equivalent of $180,000, which was more than double the apartment's value. After Raffray's death from cancer at the age of 77, in 1995, his widow continued the payments until Calment's death.

In 1956, Calment appeared in the short promotional film Vincent Van Gogh: Darkness Into Light, produced by MGM to promote Lust for Life. In the short film, shown occasionally on Turner Classic Movies, Calment is shown talking with star Kirk Douglas about her meeting Van Gogh when she was 13.