What do you think of this fact?
Anyone born in 1875 came into a world without cars, planes or radio. Jeanne Calment saw all of that arrive and much more. She lived to 122.
A life across three centuries
Jeanne Calment was born in 1875 in Arles, France, and died there in 1997. According to Guinness World Records, she lived 122 years and 164 days. That still makes her the oldest person whose age has been officially confirmed.
According to Guinness, as a young woman she even met the painter Vincent van Gogh when he lived in Arles. And she was pretty active: according to Guinness, she rode a bike until she was 100.
The worst deal in the world
Jeanne Calment is also famous for a deal. In France, there’s a special way to buy a home called a “viager”. The buyer pays the owner a monthly income, and the owner gets to stay in the home until they die. After that, it belongs to the buyer.
In 1965, Calment signed such a contract with the lawyer André-François Raffray, then 47. According to Guinness, he paid her 2,500 francs a month. Calment was 90 at the time, so the deal seemed likely to end soon.
It didn’t. Raffray paid and paid. He died in 1995, two years before Calment. According to The Local, by then he had paid more than double the apartment’s value.
Bonus fact: According to The Local, the viager is still popular in France. Plenty of homes are advertised “en viager”.
Raffray never lived in the apartment he paid so much for. Calment outlived him by two years.
Nobody has reached her age of 122 since. And the Raffray case is still considered one of the unluckiest property deals of all time.