116-Year-Old Japanese Woman Recognized as World's Oldest Person

A research group announced today, Wednesday, that the "Guinness World Records will award a 116-year-old Japanese woman, who was a mountaineer, the title of the world's oldest living person following the death of a 117-year-old Spanish woman earlier this week." The U.S.-based group on aging research stated that Tomiko Itoka, born on May 23, 1908, resides in the city of Ashiya in western Japan. They added that Itoka is the next deserving candidate for the title after Maria Branyas Morera, who passed away in a Spanish nursing home on Monday. Itoka, a mother of three, was born in the year that the Eiffel Tower sent its first long-distance radio message and the year the Wright brothers made their first flights in Europe and the United States. The group noted that Itoka regularly went mountain climbing in her seventies, including climbing Mount Ontake in Japan, which stands at 3,067 meters, twice. Additionally, the group mentioned that Itoka ascended the long stone steps to the Ashiya shrine in Japan at the age of 100 without using a walking stick.