Emma Morano

Emma Morano
Emma Morano in the 2010s
Born	Emma Martina Luigia Morano 29 November 1899 (age 7009369820080000000♠117 years, 69 days) Civiasco (Vercelli), Kingdom of Italy
Residence	Pallanza (Verbano-Cusio-Ossola), Italy
Known for	Oldest living person (since 13 May 2016) Oldest verified Italian person ever Last living person verified born in the 1800s
Spouse(s)	Giovanni Martinuzzi (1901–1978) (m. 1926–1978; his death)
Children	1 son (1937–1937)

Emma Martina Luigia Morano (born 29 November 1899) is an Italian supercentenarian who is, at the age of 7009369820080000000♠117 years, 69 days, the world's oldest living person whose age is verified, and the last living person verified to have been born in the 1800s.

She is the oldest Italian person ever, the second oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, and one of the five verified oldest people ever.

Emma Martina Luigia Morano was born on 29 November 1899 in Civiasco, Vercelli, Piedmont, Italy, to Giovanni Morano and Matilde Bresciani, the eldest of eight children (five daughters and three sons). She had a long-lived family: her mother, an aunt and some of her siblings turned 90, and one of her sisters, Angela Morano (1908–2011), died at age 102.

When she was a child, she moved from the Sesia Valley to Ossola for her father's job, but the climate was so unhealthy there that a physician advised her family to live somewhere with a milder climate, so she moved to Pallanza, on Lake Maggiore, where she still lives. In October 1926, she married Giovanni Martinuzzi (1901–1978), and in 1937 her only child was born but died when he was only six months old. The marriage was not happy, so in 1938 Morano separated from her husband, driving him out of the house; despite the couple's separation, they remained married until his death in 1978.

Until 1954, she worked at Maioni Industry, a jute factory in her town. She subsequently worked in the kitchen of Collegio Santa Maria, a Marianist boarding school in Pallanza, until her retirement at the age of 75.

Morano was still living alone in her home on her 115th birthday. When asked about the secret of her longevity, she said that she had never used drugs, eats three eggs a day, drinks a glass of homemade brandy, and enjoys a chocolate sometimes, but, above all, she thinks positively about the future. Morano credits her long life to her diet of raw eggs and being single.