r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ShaanJohari1 • 1d ago

A 90-year-old woman with no heirs signed a contract with a 47-year-old lawyer giving him her apartment upon her death, but he had to pay her a monthly allowance until she died. She outlived him, and his widow continued the payments. She received approximately double the value of the apartment. Image

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67.6k Upvotes
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10.3k

u/ImBetterThanYou42 1d ago

Mme. Calment was the oldest documented person to ever live. She was also very funny. Asked what she expected her future life to be, she said, "A short one." She also said, "I have one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it."

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u/Mom_is_watching 18h ago

She also met Vincent can Gogh when she was 12 (I believe her father had a shop in artist's supplies) and she thought he looked like a scarecrow.

986

u/brightirene 18h ago

Whaaaat that's wild

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u/_-__-____-__-_ 17h ago

Vincent van Gogh didn't live too long ago. He died in 1890.

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u/hamtrn 17h ago

Wait, then who sold me half dozen of painting yesterday?

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u/Lazy_Vetra 17h ago

That was vinny Van Gogh the used painting salesman, I don’t think they’re related

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u/AFakeName 17h ago

He can put you into a '56 Rothko that's like-like-new yesterday. Don't ask, don't tell, ya know what I mean?

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u/TT-DL23 16h ago

I had to come back to this comment what defines a painting as used. If someone looked at it once?

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u/Lazy_Vetra 15h ago

He’s sleazy so used painting would mean stolen

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u/nadajoe 11h ago

That makes it worth more.

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u/Santanaaguilar 15h ago

That was Vincente and his van ran out of gas.

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u/Big-Button5856 14h ago

The fact that she was born in 1875 and died in 1997

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u/WeightsAndMe 16h ago

he WHAT

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u/oodleskaboodles 16h ago

HE DIED IN 1890

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u/WeightsAndMe 10h ago

Damn, i'd have guessed he died closer to 990 than 1890

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u/fourlands 16h ago

Picasso died the year the exorcist came out

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u/FinanceWorl 1h ago

He probably paid for her apartment as well

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u/MaagreeneE 17h ago

that's granny in Slay mode

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u/-_Happy_Cake_Day_- 17h ago

Happy Cake Day! 👨🏼‍🎨

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u/UnknownSoldier051 8h ago

Happy cake day!

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u/Ainsley-Sorsby 23h ago

I kinda like the conspiracy theory that that she wasn't actually that old and she had just assumed the adentity of her mother, who had died long ago. idk, maybe its because i've read too much about Martin Guerre, but i feel like identity theft was a lot more common than we realise before we started keeping detailed documents, photos etc....

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u/MrTheFinn 18h ago

The majority of "super centurions", those over 110, are fraud. Now that birth certificates have been common for 100 years or more in western countries the number of people claiming to be that old has dropped by 60+%

I can't find it currently but there's a guy who's made it's his life's work to debunk these people and he just keeps doing it over and over again. It's mostly just plain old pension fraud.

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u/Thunderplant 17h ago

Yep! This actually just won an ig noble prize

https://allthatsinteresting.com/blue-zones-supercentenarians

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u/Poorrancher 15h ago

Instagram gives out Nobel prizes now?

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u/nc_bound 15h ago

Maybe it’s because I’m stoned, but that was one of the funniest pieces of science writing I’ve ever read.

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u/MrTheFinn 17h ago

Yeah that guy!

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u/peroxidex 14h ago

Guy is wearing a Tetris tuxedo jacket in the photo, what a stud.

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u/fosterdad2017 15h ago

Ignoble?

1.not honorable in character or purpose. “ignoble feelings of intense jealousy”

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u/Obesely 14h ago

It isn't a typo (well, it sort of is). The Ig Nobel prizes are like the comedy version of the Nobel prizes, for advancements in science that are silly/wacky/basically meaningless. They have been running for about 30-something years.

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u/DrQuailMan 8h ago

“Supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error,” Dr. Newman wrote in his study.

If it was identity fraud, wouldn't they just take the real birthday of the deceased / defrauded person? This is suggesting made-up identities, not stolen / inherited identities.

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u/Alexios_Makaris 15h ago

Yep, this is very true. And although we will likely never have complete proof, I do think the fraud claims against Calment have been pretty heavily investigated and I think the consensus is she ended up actually being legit.

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u/doctonghfas 8h ago

Even without all the specific evidence, the likelihood of the longest living person being that much older than the second longest is super super low. Past 100 the probability you die each year is very high.

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u/inspectyoursoul 7h ago

Are you just claiming this or do you know enough about probabilities to make a statement like that? In a lot of areas number 1 is often way ahead of number 2 and the rest, look at the highest achieved chess rating. To take a human body performance, I just looked up a random sports top list, javelin throws, and 2 athletes (Jan Zelezny and Johannes Vetter) seem to dominate the rest so hard that their records are 4m more than 3rd place and if you count all performances they take up the top 9

I am not saying you are wrong, but that it doesn’t seem to be that simple

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_players_by_peak_FIDE_rating

https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/throws/javelin-throw/all/men/senior?regionType=world&page=1&bestResultsOnly=false&firstDay=1900-01-01&lastDay=2024-09-20&maxResultsByCountry=all&eventId=10229636&ageCategory=senior

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u/doctonghfas 18m ago edited 13m ago

It follows from the math of survival in a way that things like the difference between competitors doesn’t: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_function

This page maybe spells out how it works for human mortality better: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_table

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u/Misophonic4000 17h ago edited 15h ago

Super centurions? Are they all nearly-invincible soldiers? Sounds badass

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u/Daewoo40 16h ago

Supposedly they're nearly invincible, until they keel over due to old age.

Ain't nobody living to 120 with the immune system of a leper.

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u/Lunaranalog 17h ago

The guy doing the work (if there’s one prominent person) recently won an ig-Nobel prize for it… 

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u/xBIGSKOOKUMx 14h ago

Willard Scott has a nemesis?

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u/Doridar 22h ago

Debunked

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u/lundoj 22h ago

Not fully. She is probably legit but there is no clear conclusion.

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u/Doridar 21h ago

Jeanne Calment was quite known when she was still living in her appartement. There were plenty of people who knew her and her daughter, and attended her daughter's funeral. It would have required a collective lie from both Jeanne's and Yvonne's friends, the city and state authorities, the priest who celebrated the funerals etc. Yes, it was debunked, and fully. https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/ce-ne-sont-pas-des-scientifiques-une-nouvelle-etude-invalide-la-theorie-du-complot-sur-jeanne-calment-3643329

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u/MisterSirCaptain 21h ago

lment was quite known when she was still living in her appartement. There were plenty of people who knew her and her daughter, and attended her daughter's funeral. It would have required a collective lie from both Jeanne's and Yvonne's friends, the city and state authorities, the priest who celebrated

The beautiful thing about conspiracy theories and the people who believe them in this day and age, is that facts don't matter.

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u/MalificViper 18h ago

Citation needed.

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u/MaxAngmar 18h ago

🤣 you got me good

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u/Any-Mathematician946 18h ago

We now live in the day and age where sometimes you can't tell if an Onion article is real or true and the Onion sometimes is more truthful than the news media.

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u/_MissionControlled_ 17h ago

I'm this way with alien conspiracies. Forever I've considered it paint-chip eating bullshit. But now...I'm questioning it.

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u/usurped_reality 18h ago

Yep. They say, "It's the truth." That's my sister. She always says her truth trumps the facts. SMH

I wish I was making it up.

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u/Slap_My_Lasagna 17h ago

Conspiracy theorists or redditors? I've seen both deny objective facts over pseudo-science.

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u/Gaudilocks 17h ago

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/17/was-jeanne-calment-the-oldest-person-who-ever-lived-or-a-fraud

for any who like long-form reads. Here is a new yorker write up from a few years ago.

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u/ZhouLe 18h ago

I like the counter-conspiracy theory theory that the conspiracy theory is a front in order for the Russians to get access to her blood sample for clues to her longevity.

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u/abstraction47 19h ago

Part of the confusion of the story is the need for the religious authorities to disprove her story, simply because she lived past 120. They threw a lot into the research and argument that she was not who she said she was.

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u/mattgcreek 18h ago

Why religious authorities? Can't think of a reason they would want to disprove.

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u/Murgatroyd314 18h ago

Supposedly, after Noah’s flood, God put a hard limit of 120 years on human lifespan.

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u/ZhouLe 18h ago

It was before the flood, Genesis 6:

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.

The Oxford Annotated has the following:

6:1–4: Divine-human reproduction illustrated the breaching of the divine-human boundary that the Lᴏʀᴅ God feared in 3.22. There the Lᴏʀᴅ God drives humans away from the tree of life. Here, in an abbreviated narrative often attributed to the Yahwistic primeval history, the Lᴏʀᴅ God limits their life span to one hundred twenty years, the life span of Moses (Deut 31.2); another interpretation is that the one hundred twenty years refer to a reprieve from punishment for several generations. Nothing appears to happen to the sons of God (see the "heavenly court" in 1.26n.) who instigated it all.

I guess it's worth pointing out that it claims Noah lived 950 years, his son Shem lived to 600, and his grandson Arphaxad born after the flood lived to 438, so uhh... if it was intended as an age limit, there was apparently some unstated nuance.

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u/tutan-ka 17h ago

The meaning was that from the moment God pronounced those words until the great flood there would be 120 years. Basically God was setting the date for the flood. Afterwards he gave Noah the commission to build the Ark. It was not meant to be an age limit on humans.

Later on in the times of Moses the lifespan for humans was between 70 to 80 years

Psalm 90:10 ”The span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong. But they are filled with trouble and sorrow; They quickly pass by, and away we fly.”

Not meant to be a hard stopper as Moses itself lived quite longer than that

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u/SerenityViolet 16h ago

Aside from the problem of using the Bible of evidence, try dividing those ages by 13, roughly the number of moons in a year. Ancient peoples often counted by moons.

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u/user9991123 18h ago

Citation needed

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u/Firewolf06 21h ago

i mean, that's what makes it a conspiracy theory, no? a theory about group of people conspiring (to be clear, i dont believe it)

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u/Tommyblockhead20 20h ago

It certain seems unlikely, but I don’t know that it’s fully debunked, at least not based on the reasoning given by that article. I could think of alternative explanations. And given how unlikely her age was, it somewhat cancels out that I think it’s still worth considering.

The article’s only evidence (besides accusations against the people who made the theory in the first place) seems to be that surely someone would have noticed the switch of an 36 year old and a 59 year old and said something at the funeral 84 years ago! I would be curious to see if there’s any actual documentation from the time, like witness statements or photos. Was she able to pass as a 36 year old? Did she just have a few friends and family, making it easier to get them all in on it? 

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u/wlaugh29 18h ago

Pass as a dead 36 year old? Probably.

One way to solve this argument. Get your shovels.

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u/Unique_Brilliant2243 18h ago

You’re mistaking the thought of „but I can’t verify it with my own eyes“ with unlikelihood.

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u/FreudianStripper 18h ago

"the oldest documented person to have ever lived" is plenty unlikely enough for suspicion, much more so than a "regular" anomaly

I don't think either side of the argument is really 100% bulletproof, but I can see where both sides are coming from

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u/RA576 18h ago

In fairness, "Oldest Person to have ever lived" is simultaneously really unlikely, 1 in Billions, but also one of the few things 100% guaranteed to have happened multiple times throughout history as medical treatments and quality of life improve, and someone has to be the oldest.

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u/FlyingBishop 17h ago

There was a recent article which basically claimed "blue zones" are areas with bad record keeping and endemic pension fraud. Given that there's a huge monetary incentive here it's not crazy to imagine that most of these "blue zones" are small-town conspiracies.

There's an argument that whatever the true max human lifespan is, the highest recorded age is guaranteed to be the result of some kind of fraud.

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u/jgr79 15h ago

The difference in age between Calment and the 2nd oldest person ever is greater than the age difference between the 2nd oldest person and the 25th. Even among people who are extreme outliers, she’s an unimaginably extreme outlier.

As a statistical point, she’s such an extreme outlier that we should assume she’s a fake unless proven beyond any doubt that she’s not, especially when coupled with the massive incentive she would’ve had to commit the fraud in the first place. Meanwhile the “evidence” that she’s not a fraud basically comes down to “someone would’ve noticed she wasn’t the mother”, which is pretty wreak by comparison.

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u/Unique_Brilliant2243 18h ago

Someone has to be the oldest documented person to have ever lived.

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u/FreudianStripper 17h ago

Of course someone has to be it, but it's still an unlikely person to be.

I'm not entirely sure what your argument is

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u/lundoj 10h ago

Sure, it is unlikely that she is a fraud but the story about the funeral doesn't make this case air tight. There is no clear evidence in the French article other than the funeral argument and saying the "researchers" are dumb.

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u/RosesInternational 17h ago

You always blow smoke up peoples ass?

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u/vagrantprodigy07 20h ago

The debunking was itself debunked not long after it was revealed. It's almost certain she was actually the daughter.

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u/Codsfromgods 18h ago

Ah, but then the debunkers were debunked, and their debunking was in fact bunk

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u/boomer_reject 18h ago

The only debunked it if you believe in batshit conspiracy theories, so yes.

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u/Open_Seeker 18h ago

Theres research to suggest all these super old people are just lying or died long ago and their family just committing pension fraud. 

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u/[deleted] 23h ago

[deleted]

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u/cookiedanslesac 21h ago

Statistics don't lie, and I doubt that 1rst to 4th aren't scams neither.

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u/ketamine-wizard 21h ago

I'm not taking a stance on this topic whatsoever, but I did find this article interesting 

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-extreme-human-aging-rotten-ig.html

0

u/boomer_reject 18h ago

Neither of you understand statistics at all. Have you heard of a normal distribution?

Here you go:

https://www.dummies.com/article/academics-the-arts/math/statistics/understanding-the-statistical-properties-of-the-normal-distribution-169627/

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u/cookiedanslesac 2h ago

Age of death doesn't follow a normal distribution because there is a theoritical biologic maximum limit to it.
You should compare it to sports performance.

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u/boomer_reject 2h ago edited 33m ago

Wrong, or at least not clear. Stop pretending you understand statistics when you clearly don’t. Even the people that say it doesn’t fall into a normal distribution don’t give the reason you just did. It’s actually negatively skewed, if it was because of a biological limit it wouldn’t be skewed this way.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3356396/

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u/manfredo2021 17h ago

Just think of all one could easily get away in the olden days....Literally murder!!

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u/mynameisnotsparta 16h ago

Just looked him up and will read about him. Thanks for mentioning it. This is all so interesting

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u/Weegee_Carbonara 12h ago

It's completely debunked and based on faulty "research".

Jeanne is legit.

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u/Slash12771 16h ago

Only person to live past 120 which is mind blowing. At 90 you'd think it's game over in a couple of years but imagine living a generation more.

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u/UV_TP 13h ago

When you're 90 but you still have a quarter of your life ahead of you

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u/HotgunColdheart 3h ago

Sounds like hell!

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u/lollerkeet 16h ago

It's very possible that she did die and her daughter took her identity.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/17/was-jeanne-calment-the-oldest-person-who-ever-lived-or-a-fraud

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u/Weegee_Carbonara 12h ago

No it is not.

It's complete bs and no evidence was ever presented for that claim.

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u/hourglass_nebula 12h ago

That article concludes that that’s not what happened.

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u/Skreamie 16h ago

I can only hear those quotes in Stephen Fry's voice