logo
‘I do what I like': Ethel, 115, is the world's oldest living person

‘I do what I like': Ethel, 115, is the world's oldest living person

A 115-year-old British woman born in the Edwardian era has become the world's oldest living person.
Ethel Caterham, who was born in 1909, is the oldest-known Briton to ever live and the last surviving subject of Edward VII.
She is now the world's oldest person after the previous record-holder, Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas, died at the age of 116 on April 30.
Caterham, who lives at a care home in Lightwater, Surrey, previously said, 'I do what I like', when asked what she credits for her longevity.
'Never arguing with anyone, I listen, and I do what I like,' she said last year after turning 115.
According to LongeviQuest and the Gerontology Research Group, research organisations that verify ages for the Guinness World Records, she is now the world's oldest person.
Born in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire, on August 21, 1909, Caterham was raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire, as the second youngest of eight children.
Aged 18, she became an au pair to a military family in British India before returning to England three years later, where in 1931 she met her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Caterham.
They married at Salisbury Cathedral, where he had been a choirboy, in 1933.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Dreamliner seemed stuck in the air before crash, survivor says
Dreamliner seemed stuck in the air before crash, survivor says

The Age

time5 hours ago

  • The Age

Dreamliner seemed stuck in the air before crash, survivor says

London: A British man is the sole survivor of the crash of Air India flight 171, which went down moments after take-off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, killing more than 240 people, in one of the world's deadliest aviation disasters in years and India's worst in almost two decades. A second Air India flight turned around and made an emergency landing in Phuket on Friday when it received a bomb threat while en route to New Delhi, airport authorities said. Passengers were escorted off the plane. From hospital, where he was being treated for burns and other injuries, Flight 171 survivor Viswash Kumar Ramesh told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he still could not believe he was alive. Ramesh told India's national broadcaster during the meeting with Modi that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner seemed to be stuck in the air for a few seconds after take-off. The lights started flickering green and white, and the plane, which was bound for London Gatwick Airport with 242 people from India, Britain, Portugal and Canada on board, seemed unable to gain height before it crashed. He said the section of the plane where he was seated landed on the ground, rather than a building, and there was room for him to escape. He unfastened his seat belt and forced himself out of the plane. 'Maybe the people who were on the other side of the plane weren't able to,' he told the Hindustan Times. 'I don't know how I survived. I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me ... I walked out of the rubble.' Investigators have started combing the wreckage of the plane to determine what caused it to plummet into a medical college in a residential area on Thursday, just seconds after leaving the runway. Rescuers have recovered more than 200 bodies from the crash site – a hostel for doctors near the airport in the western city of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat, which was strewn with debris and the remains of passengers. Smoke from the explosion was visible for kilometres, and parts of the aircraft, including its torn fuselage and tail marked 'VT-ANB', were seen embedded in the multi-storey building.

Dreamliner seemed stuck in the air before crash, survivor says
Dreamliner seemed stuck in the air before crash, survivor says

Sydney Morning Herald

time6 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Dreamliner seemed stuck in the air before crash, survivor says

London: A British man is the sole survivor of the crash of Air India flight 171, which went down moments after take-off in Ahmedabad on Thursday, killing more than 240 people, in one of the world's deadliest aviation disasters in years and India's worst in almost two decades. A second Air India flight turned around and made an emergency landing in Phuket on Friday when it received a bomb threat while en route to New Delhi, airport authorities said. Passengers were escorted off the plane. From hospital, where he was being treated for burns and other injuries, Flight 171 survivor Viswash Kumar Ramesh told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he still could not believe he was alive. Ramesh told India's national broadcaster during the meeting with Modi that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner seemed to be stuck in the air for a few seconds after take-off. The lights started flickering green and white, and the plane, which was bound for London Gatwick Airport with 242 people from India, Britain, Portugal and Canada on board, seemed unable to gain height before it crashed. He said the section of the plane where he was seated landed on the ground, rather than a building, and there was room for him to escape. He unfastened his seat belt and forced himself out of the plane. 'Maybe the people who were on the other side of the plane weren't able to,' he told the Hindustan Times. 'I don't know how I survived. I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me ... I walked out of the rubble.' Investigators have started combing the wreckage of the plane to determine what caused it to plummet into a medical college in a residential area on Thursday, just seconds after leaving the runway. Rescuers have recovered more than 200 bodies from the crash site – a hostel for doctors near the airport in the western city of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat, which was strewn with debris and the remains of passengers. Smoke from the explosion was visible for kilometres, and parts of the aircraft, including its torn fuselage and tail marked 'VT-ANB', were seen embedded in the multi-storey building.

Former pilot's theory on how sole survivor of Air India crash escaped unscathed
Former pilot's theory on how sole survivor of Air India crash escaped unscathed

Perth Now

time10 hours ago

  • Perth Now

Former pilot's theory on how sole survivor of Air India crash escaped unscathed

The sole survivor of the Air India plane tragedy might have made it out of the plane wreckage relatively unscathed because he was seated by an emergency exit, a former Qantas pilot has claimed. Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who was in seat 11A, was the sole survivor of Thursday's Air India crash, which killed at least 290 people, including all the other passengers onboard the plane. The ill-fated flight was travelling from Ahmedabad in western India to London's Gatwick Airport, before it crashed just moments after take-off, in one of the worst aviation tragedies in the last decade. Indian authorities are investigating the cause of the crash. Ramesh, who is a British national, walked away remarkably unscathed from the doomed flight. Former pilot David Oliver appeared on Weekend Sunrise on Saturday, speaking about the Air India tragedy. Credit: Seven Former Qantas pilot David Oliver appeared on Weekend Sunrise on Saturday, where he was questioned about the crash. 'Sitting above the wing, which contains a lot of fuel. It's remarkable he was able to walk away unscathed,' Oliver told hosts Chris Reason and Monique Wright. 'How it was that he managed to get out and people around him were unable to only compounds the luck that he had to come away almost uninjured.' It has been reported Ramesh was in row five, just behind business class, next to an emergency exit. On Friday, Ramesh told reporters he was able to push open the emergency exit door before the plane exploded. 'He was very, very lucky to be seated there,' Oliver said. 'He was lucky that he just had that fleeting seconds to escape the aircraft before it burst into that fireball.' Oliver was questioned on how to increase your chances of survival on a plane. 'The obvious thing is to listen to the safety instructions,' he said. 'Always wear your seatbelt and have it reasonably, firmly tightened in-flight.' 'I think you've got to wear sensible clothing, bare skin going down an escape slide will give you burns. Maybe not as much as Lycra, so just be sensible about what you're wearing. 'No high-heeled shoes for the ladies. You don't want to puncture an escape slide if you're going out. 'But the important thing, listen to the safety instructions and always wear your seatbelt.' Investigators have recovered equipment from this week's tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad, India, which could shed light on the final moments on the flight deck. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which were recovered from on top of the medical college hostel building where the plane crashed, could put to rest some of the speculation into the investigation that killed 241 people aboard the aircraft, according to aviation industry experts. The flight data recorder was recovered from the rear end of the plane. The question will be whether the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators, India, or another country will ingest the black boxes' data, according to Peter Goelz, former managing director of the NTSB and a CNN aviation analyst. 'It's quite dramatic,' Goelz told CNN. 'It looked to me like the plane was trying to land at the end. It was flaring, but we just won't know until we get the boxes back.' The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of India is in possession of the recorders and other potential pieces of evidence for the investigation. The data recorders are expected to give some insight into what happened during the flight's final moments, when pilots were making critical decisions. Less than a minute after take-off, staff on the plane gave a mayday call to air traffic control, Indian civil aviation authorities said. The deadly crash has drawn even more global attention to air safety and spurred on public anxieties about flying. There have already been several aviation tragedies and incidents this year — including January's midair collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet — that have prompted calls to increase safety measures. - with CNN

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store