An extraordinary new milestone for Ethel Caterham , the world's oldest person : the English great-grandmother has turned 117.
In a statement, she thanked everyone for the birthday wishes she had received , saying that the past year had been marked by "many firsts": at the top of the list was meeting King Charles , who came to visit her at her nursing home in Surrey.
Caterham was born on August 21, 1909, in a village in Hampshire, southern England: before the flood of the Great War, while King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, great-grandfather of the late Elizabeth II and great-great-grandfather of the current monarch, the 77-year-old Charles III, sat on the throne of what was still the British Empire.
The youngest of eight children, grandmother Ethel received a personal letter from the sovereign after her record was made official last year, congratulating her on the "remarkable achievement" she had achieved.
At 18, she moved to colonial India, working as an au pair in the family of an officer in Her Majesty's Army. Upon returning to Britain, she met her future husband, Norman, at a party. She married him in 1933 and lived with him in Hong Kong and Gibraltar before returning to England. Widowed half a century ago, in 1976, Ethel only stopped driving when she was approaching 100. At nearly 111, she even managed to recover from Covid.
(Unioneonline)
