The world's oldest person, Susannah Mushatt Jones, died Thursday night in New York at the age of 116. Jones had reportedly been ill for 10 days preceding her death at the public housing facility for seniors in Brooklyn where she'd been living for more than three decades.
One of 11 children, Jones was born in a small town near Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899. She became the world's oldest person after 117-year-old Misao Okawa died last year in Japan.
Jones said her key to a long life was surrounding herself "with love and positive energy" and never drinking or smoking. In 2014, Jones told Time that she treated herself to four strips of bacon every morning along with scrambled eggs and grits, and that she also still enjoyed wearing "high-end lace lingerie."
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The world's oldest person alive is now thought to be Emma Morano, a 116-year-old Italian woman. According to The Telegraph, when she was told she was now the oldest person in the world, Morano's response was "My word, I'm as old as the hills."
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