a when jeanne calment entered the world in 1875, telephones and automobiles still lay in the future. albert einstein and pablo picasso were not yet born. the eiffel tower was 14 years from being built. as a teenager, she met vincent van gogh, near her home in arles, in the south of france. he was “very ugly, ungracious 举止粗俗的, impolite, sick—i forgive him, they called him loco 精神失常的”, she recalled. when she died last week at age 122, she was the world’s eldest person. there are others who claimed to the title, but only calment had the official documents to prove her age. each february 21, her birthday, she would share the secrets of long life. some years it was “a sense of humour”, others it was “keeping busy”. “god must have forgotten me,” she once explained. the truth probably
