When someone reaches an age most of us can barely imagine, the world wants answers. There must be a secret, right? A magic diet? A hidden habit? A routine only the truly disciplined could follow?
But ask Ethel Caterham — now 116 years old and officially the oldest living woman on the planet — and she’ll shrug off every myth with one simple line:
“I don’t argue with anyone. I listen, and then I do what I like.”
Coming from a woman who has lived through more history than most textbooks can fit, that philosophy suddenly makes a lot of sense.
A Life That Started in a Different World
Ethel was born on August 21, 1909, in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire. To put that in perspective:
- She was a toddler when the Titanic sank.
- She was five when World War I began.
- She grew up as one of eight siblings in a family where living past 100 wasn’t unusual — her sister Gladys even reached 104.
Still, nobody could have predicted that Ethel would outlive her entire generation and become a global record-breaker more than a century later.
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