Oldest Person in the World Dies

The world's oldest person, 116-year-old  of Arkansas, died Monday, a spokesperson for her nursing home declared.

The Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in Camden, Arkansas, said she died from complications of pneumonia.

"We're so sad about it," a staffer at the nursing home said. "She did everything on her bucket list and her mind was very sharp."

Weaver, who was born in 1898, had been the oldest person in America, but last week she became the oldest person in the world when 117-year-old Misao Okawa in Japan had died, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, which tracks supercentenarians.

Weaver had said she wanted President Barack Obama to attend her 117th birthday party on the Fourth of July.

The Guinness Book of World Records was to make the final call on the oldest person, said Robert Moore, director of the research group's supercentenarians program.

"When people pass away, there is often an application process ... but they may not wait for that process to name her the oldest person in the world," he said last week. "Only five documented people have ever reached 117."

Weaver was raised in a small unincorporated community outside of Texarkana and had lived in Arkansas almost all of her life.

The Gerontology Research Group used 1900 census records, which listed Weaver as 2 years old, and a marriage license from 1915 that listed her age as 17 to determine she was the oldest living American.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team