World’s allegedly oldest person dies at 132

A photo taken on July 8, 2010 shows Georgian woman Antisa Khvichava blowing out candles on her cake during her 130th birthday party in the village of Sachino, some 370 km west of Tbilisi. Khvichava is purported to be the oldest person in the world. AFP

Antisa Khvichava claimed to have been born July 8, 1880, and had a Soviet-era passport and documentation to that effect, but her age was contested and never officially proven.

She lived in Sachino village in northwest Georgia with her 42-year-old grandson and claimed to have retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85.

Khvichava claimed to be just 10 years younger than Russia’s first communist leader Vladimir Lenin and to have been born a year before the death of celebrated Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

She said she had 12 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren and reportedly attributed her longevity and good health to drinking a small amount of local brandy every day, according to the newspaper.

Her original birth certificate is said to have been lost during the years of revolutions and civil wars that ravaged Georgia following the fall of the USSR.

But local officials, friends, neighbours and descendants have all back up the claim she was 132 when she died, the daily said.

The oldest living person at the moment is 116-year-old Besse Cooper from the state of Georgia in the US. Her birth can be officially proven to have been in August 1896.

The oldest ever verified person was French woman Jeanne Calment, born in February 1875, who lived to 122 years and 164 days before dying in August 1997.