*Ø* Blogmanac August 4, 1997 | World's oldest living person
Jeanne Calment of France, died at age 122. She lived through France's Third and Fourth Republics, and into its Fifth. She met Vincent Van Gogh in 1888 when he came to her uncle's shop to buy paints, and later remembered him as “dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable.” Mme Calment was 14 when the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889. She gave up smoking in 1995, and her doctor said her abstinence was due to pride rather than health – she was too blind to light a cigarette herself, and hated asking others to do it for her.