A Dutchwoman, the world’s oldest person on record who swore by a daily helping of herring for a healthy life, died on Tuesday aged 115, the ANP news agency reported.
Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, a former needlework teacher born on June 29, 1890, died in her sleep at a nursing home in the northern Dutch town of Hoogeveen.
“Mrs. Van Andel-Schipper passed away peacefully,” ANP quoted the director of the nursing home as saying. “She told me that she thought it was great to have been the world’s oldest person and that she looked back on a very fine life.”
Also known as Hennie, the passionate soccer fan married a tax inspector in the 1930s and was forced to sell her jewelry to buy food during the German occupation in World War II.
The Guinness World Records book had confirmed she was the world’s oldest known person.
The world’s oldest living man on record, Emiliano Mercado Del Toro, lives in Puerto Rico. He was born on Aug. 21, 1891.
The record for the longest life is held by French woman Jeanne-Louise Calment who died aged 122 in 1997, according to Guinness World Records.
