Ethel Caterham, the world's oldest living person, has celebrated her 117th birthday with family and friends in Surrey, according to BBC. Ms Caterham, who lives at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, became the world's oldest living person in April 2025 after the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, who was 116.Born three years before the Titanic disaster and eight years before the Russian Revolution, Ethel has also lived through two world wars.
According to BBC report, she is one of the oldest people to survive Covid-19, after contracting it in 2020 at the age of 110, according to Guinness World Records. Originally from Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire, the second youngest of eight children, Ethel was raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire.
The last surviving subject of King Edward VII, as a teenager she travelled to India in 1927 and began working as an au pair to a military family there.
Ethel met her husband Norman, a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, at a dinner party in the UK in 1931 and the pair later lived in Hong Kong, where she set up a nursery school, as per BBC report.
According to CNN, They later returned to Britain and raised two daughters, both of whom have since died. Her husband died in 1976.Caterham has three granddaughters and five great-grandchildren.
According to Guinness World Records, Ethel Caterham's sister Gladys Babilas (d. 9 March 2002) also lived an impressive amount of time, surviving to the age of 104 years and 78 days.
Despite her impressive years, Caterham is still some way short of the record for the longest verified human lifespan.That title belongs to Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days.
