ECUADOR: Maria Esther de Capovilla, the planet's oldest person according to Guinness world records, has died in Ecuador aged 116, her granddaughter said.
Catherine Capovilla (46), a property manager and estate agent in Miami, said Ms Capovilla died on Sunday in a hospital in the coastal city of Guayaquil, two days after coming down with pneumonia.
Born on September 14, 1889 - the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler - Ms Capovilla was married in 1917 and widowed in 1949.
Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness world records, said Elizabeth Bolden, of Memphis, Tennessee, is the likely successor as the oldest person.
"For all practical purposes, the next oldest person is going to be presumed to be Elizabeth Bolden. She is 116, but she was born 11 months after Capovilla."
Emiliano Mercado Del Toro, of Puerto Rico, who turned 115 last week, is the world's oldest man.
Three of Ms Capovilla's five children - Irma, Hilda, and son Anibal - are still alive, along with 12 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
In her youth, she liked to embroider, paint, play the piano and dance the waltz at parties, the family said. She also visited a nearby plantation, where she would drink fresh milk from donkeys as well as cows.
She always ate three meals a day and never smoked or drank hard liquor - "only a small cup of wine with lunch and nothing more", her daughter Irma said.