Free Republic

The pursuit of understanding the secrets behind exceptional longevity isn't easy. Now our recent study has unveiled some common biomarkers, including levels of cholesterol and glucose, in people who live past 90. Our research included data from 44,000 Swedes who underwent health assessments at ages 64-99. These participants were then followed through Swedish register data for up to 35 years. Twelve blood-based biomarkers related to inflammation, metabolism, liver and kidney function, as well as potential malnutrition and anemia, were included. All of these have been associated with aging or mortality in previous studies. We found that, on the whole, those...

A 104-year-old Chicago woman died on Monday morning just days after leaping out of an airplane and breaking the world record for the oldest skydiver. Centenarian daredevil Dorothy Hoffner lived an “exciting, well-lived life,” a spokesperson for Skydive Chicago & U.S. Parachute Association, who shared the news of her death with the Chicago Sun-Times, said in a statement. The thrill-seeker’s cause of death was not immediately released. Hoffner became the oldest person to jump out of an airplane with a parachute on Oct. 1, when she safely landed a 13,500-foot tandem jump at Skydive Chicago Airport in Ottawa, Illinois outside...

The oldest living former U.S. senator turns 100 Thursday. James L. Buckley is among the few in American history who have served in the upper echelons of all three branches of our government. Jim Buckley served as a lieutenant in the Navy during the final years of the Pacific war. After the war, he attended Yale Law School and became an attorney. In 1970 Mr. Buckley won a historic third-party victory as the Conservative Party’s Senate nominee in New York. Serving as a U.S. senator until 1977, Mr. Buckley was an articulate and cordial agent of change and an advocate...

His wife just texted me. He passed away suddenly today. He wanted Free Republic to know. He was active on the Talk Radio threads, especially Levin, Limbaugh, Plante & others. His birthday was on Friday, 9/24/21. His wife just wrote: "No words". We know each other from WMAL events. May he Rest In Peace.

Hester Ford, born in 1904, moved to Charlotte in the 1950s. Ford has seen a lot in her lifetime, more than anyone in the United States. She had been known as the oldest living American at 116 years old. Ford died Saturday, according to her great-granddaughter. “Her light shined beyond her local area and she lived beyond a century with memories containing real-life experience of over 100 years,” her great-granddaughter Tanisha Patterson-Powe said. “She not only represented the advancement of our family but of the Black African American race and culture in our country. She was a reminder of how...

Velma Farlin is 104 years old. Recently, she contracted the coronavirus. She beat it. “You know, the Lord is a healer of sickness,” she said Thursday as she sat in her room at Wellspring Meadows Assisted Living facility, the place she has called home for about seven years. While COVID-19 is especially dangerous, even fatal, to the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, Farlin said she was never scared after learning she had it. She said it left her weary and affected her sense of smell for several days, but otherwise, it didn’t hit her too hard. And for...

Four years ago, in this same space and at a time when many Americans were on the horns of a dilemma that was the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I offered an alternative: former Secretary of State George Shultz. My argument was based on Mr. Shultz’s resume (he’s one only two Americans to have held four cabinet posts – State, Treasury, Labor and OMB – the other being the late Elliot Richardson) . . . His character (more on that in a moment) . . . And the fact that running the country would help Secretary Shultz pass...

He has lifted the spirits of the nation with his £39million fundraising effort to celebrate turning 100. Now Colonel Tom Moore – who has already been promoted from captain – is to be recognised further with a knighthood, it was revealed last night. The Second World War veteran received a special nomination from the Prime Minister, which is to become the first of dozens of coronavirus crisis gongs. Boris Johnson described him as a national treasure and said he had provided a 'beacon of light' through the Covid-19 crisis. Sir Tom has raised a remarkable £32.8million for NHS charities by...

Annie Glenn, the wife of the late astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn, is turning 100 Monday and is doing fine, a spokesman said. But she is eschewing the media spotlight that shone on her and her husband for nearly six decades. “The Glenn family is appreciative of the continued affection and interest toward Annie. She is well but is no longer doing interviews,” Hank Wilson, a spokesman for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, said in an email.

SARASOTA, Fla. — A 107-year-old Florida man keeps his wits through a debate group at his senior home, spending time with his fiancee and periodically driving his red convertible. Joe Newman, who made a bid for Congress in Sarasota when he turned 100, runs a discussion group at his senior facility. Keeping up with current events keeps him going, he told WFLA. “It is my contention that mental exercise is just as important as physical exercise,” the centenarian told WFLA. “Just getting out of bed in the morning and figuring out something to do that is worth doing the next...

Patricia Morison, the glamorous star who originated the role of the shrewish actress diva in the delightful 1948 Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, has died. She was 103. Morison, who also appeared on stage opposite Yul Brynner in The King and I in such films as The Song of Bernadette (1943), died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles of natural causes. With a mane of exuberant, dark hair that reached her hips, Morison often was cast as a villainess or “the other woman” on the big screen.

A 100-year-old Texas man says he's on “the top of the world” after breaking five world running records for his age group during a championship meet in Maryland last weekend. Orville Rogers, a Dallas resident who trained bomber pilots during World War II, is proof age is just a number after his record-setting performances at the USATF Master Indoor Track and Field Championships.

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. - Theresa Rowley has been a resident at Sentinel Pointe Retirement Community in Grand Rapids for the past 15 years. She moved in when she was 89 years old. On Jan.1, 2018, she turned 104. "I'm surprised that I'm 104," said Rowley. It just doesn't seem like I should be that old." When asked when she and her family moved to Grand Rapids, Rowley couldn't remember the exact year, only saying that she was born in Illinois in 1914, then moved to North Dakota before eventually coming to Michigan. "When I was 100, I thought I'd never...

Frank Royal's Air Force took off at 1:38 p.m. A vintage aircraft clawed through the air followed by two chase planes, one carrying the 101-year-old pilot. The last plane in the formation brought a tear to Royal's eye. Its sleek lines still raise his pulse. He can hear the thrum of its twin engines without his hearing aids - World War II ingrained the 24-cylinder symphony permanently in his mind. He has good reason to remember the details. That very plane, a fully restored P-38 Lightning named White-33, was Royal's first love. And he flew over Colorado Springs to tell...

Elmo Williams, the celebrated Hollywood film editor who won an Academy Award for his clockwork, minute-by-minute efforts on the classic 1952 Gary Cooper Western High Noon, has died. He was 102. Williams, who received another Oscar nom for his editing on the 1954 sci-fi film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, died peacefully Wednesday at his home in Brookings on the coast of Oregon ...

Professor Irwin Corey — 100, who appeared on TV with Paar, Bishop, Carson, Griffin — was recently seen at Sarge’s Deli “denying he passed away.”

On May 27, the American novelist Herman Wouk will attain the prodigious age of 100. Over his long career, Wouk has achieved all the wealth and fame a writer could desire, or even imagine. His first great success, The Caine Mutiny (1951), occupied bestseller lists for two consecutive years, sold millions of copies, and inspired a film adaptation that became the second highest-grossing movie of 1954. Wouk’s grand pair of novels, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, likewise found a global audience, both in print, and then as two television miniseries in the 1980s. Wouk won a Pulitzer...

Alice Ludes, a radio star who appeared in many Hollywood musicals, turned 102 in Ventura Saturday. Ludes entertained guests by playing the piano at her birthday party at a retirement home in Ventura.

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Catherine Furst, known to her friends as Kay, turned 100 years old over the weekend. Furst isn't your typical senior citizen. She credits being kind and belly dancing to her long healthy life.

After nine decades in the business, the former collaborator of Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles is still looking for his next great role. The earliest surviving footage of broadcast television in America is a fragment of "The Streets of New York," an adaptation of playwright Dion Boucicault's 19th-century drama, aired by the experimental New York NBC affiliate W2XBS on August 31, 1939. All that now remains of the hour-long program is a silent, 11-minute kinescope, filmed off a TV screen and archived at the Paley Center For Media. And there, in those primitive flickering images, you can catch...