World's oldest person, Italian woman Emma Morano, dies aged 117

Emma Morano, at 117 the world's oldest person and also believed to have been the last surviving person born in the 1800s, has died at her home in northern Italy.

Ms Morano's doctor, Carlo Bava, said the woman's caretaker had called him to say she had stopped breathing in the afternoon while sitting in an armchair at her home in Verbania, a town on Italy's Lake Maggiore.

While Ms Morano had been increasingly spending more time sleeping and less time speaking in recent weeks, she had eaten her daily raw eggs and biscuits that day, he said.

Ms Morano, born on November 29, 1899, had been living in a tidy, one-room apartment, where she was kept company by her caregiver and two elderly nieces.

"She didn't suffer. I'm happy she didn't suffer but passed away that way, tranquilly," Dr Bava said.

He said she had been her usual "chatterbox self" until a few weeks ago.

"She was slowly fading away," Dr Bava said.

Unhappy marriage

"My life wasn't so nice," Ms Morano said last November on her 117th birthday.

"I worked in a factory until I was 65, then that was that."

In an interview with La Stampa newspaper five years ago she said her fiance had died in WWI and that she had then been forced to marry a man she did not love.

"'Either you agree to marry me or I will kill you'," Ms Morano said, recalling his proposal.

"I was 26. We got married."

It was not a happy marriage — they had a son in 1937, but the baby died after just six months and the following year Ms Morano kicked out her abusive husband.

"I separated from him in 1938. I think I was one of the first in Italy to do that," she said.

She outlived all her eight brothers and sisters, including one who died at 102.

Ms Morano went on to support herself by working in a factory making jute bags, then at a hotel, working far beyond the usual retirement age.

She also defied health advice, Dr Bava said on Saturday.

Some doctors had warned her against eating three eggs daily, which she did for years, but she ignored their advice.

Vocabularies：

Caretaker：n. 看管者；守护者 adj. 临时代理的

Caregive：n. 照料者，护理者

Armchair：n. 扶手椅，单人沙发 adj. 不切实际的

Tranquilly：adv. 平静地；安静地

Chatterbox：n. 喋喋不休者

Outlive：vt. 比…活得长

Jute：n. 黄麻；黄麻纤维

Defy：vt. 挑衅 n. 挑战；对抗