Jeanne Louise Calment (ʒan lwiz kalmɑ̃; 21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 supercentenarian

Supercentenarian

A supercentenarian is someone who has reached the age of 110 years. This age is achieved by about one in a thousand centenarians....

 who had the longest confirmed human life span

Oldest people

This is a list of tables of the verified oldest people in the world in ordinal rank, such as oldest person or oldest man. In these tables, a supercentenarian is considered 'verified' if his or her claim has been validated by an international body that specifically deals in longevity research, such...

 in history, living to the age of . She lived in Arles

Arles

Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, for her entire life, and outlived both her daughter and grandson. She became especially well known from the age of 113, when the centenary

Century

A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...

 of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

's visit brought reporters to Arles. She entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1988, and on 17 October 1995 she became the oldest person ever, having surpassed the (now dubious) case of Shigechiyo Izumi

Shigechiyo Izumi

was a Japanese centenarian who was titled the oldest living person after the death of Niwa Kawamoto, also from Japan. His case was first verfied by Guinness World Records, who titled him the oldest person ever, but Guinness have in recent years backed from their previous statement; in the Guinness...

 of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.