No young whipper snapper was going to sweep in and steal Besse Cooper's record.
At 114 years and 209 days old, Cooper already has been certified as the world's oldest living person. The Monroe woman took over first place after the January death of Eunice Sanborn of Texas.
The Gerontology Research Group and the Guinness Book of World Records both verified Cooper's age and her No. 1 status.
Enter Miss Rebecca Lanier of Ohio.
Lanier's family just held a 119th birthday party in her honor. That's 119 big ones.
The family contends she was born in March 1892, which would've made her a sweet 4-year-old when Cooper entered the world. But there's no birth certificate for Lanier, whose parents were slaves in Mississippi.
Not so fast, Guinness said Thursday. The record keepers put one of their senior consultants to work to settle the dispute.
“An investigation into Ms. Lanier's age located two census records that suggest she was born in 1905 or 1906 (age 14 in 1920; age 24 in 1930). Both the 1920 and 1930 census reports were based on verbal responses, so even with any slight misspellings, this shouldn’t deter us from recognizing who is who," according to senior Guinness World Records gerontology consultant Robert Young.
Way to go, Besse.
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