Louise Delany’s second book, The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom, was published by Kodansha America in October 1994, when she was 105 years old. Her sister and co-author, A. Elizabeth Delany, was 103. A. Elizabeth Delany died in September 1995.
The oldest ever man to father a child was reportedly Les Colley (1898 – 1998, Australia), who had his ninth child a son named Oswald to his third wife at the age of 92 years 10 months. Colley met Oswald’s Fijian mother in 1991 through a dating agency at the age of 90. “I never thought she would get pregnant so easy, but she bloody well did,” he told newspaper reporters.
A team of French and Belgian researchers have extracted DNA from the tooth of a Neanderthal child who lived in the Meuse Basin, Belgium, around 100,000 years ago. The analysis of the DNA, released in June 2006, shows that Neanderthals had a greater genetic diversity 100,000 years ago than they did by the time modern humans arrived in Europe around 35,000 years ago.
As early as the 13th century AD, ‘black powder’ was in use in Europe. This mixture of charcoal, potassium nitrate and sulphur is the oldest explosive in the world and was not superceded until 1866 when Alfred Nobel was first able to control nitroglycerine.
The most ancient ski in existence was found well preserved in a peat bog at Hoting, Sweden, dating from c. 2500 BC. Information from Archives (e.g. 1993). Submitted for use in Scholastic’s Modern Marvels.
The world’s oldest spam was sent at 12:33 EDT on 3 May 1978 by Gary Thuerk (USA), then working for Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC, USA). It was sent to 397 email accounts on the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) of the US Defense Dept., inviting them to a product demonstration of the DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060 and 2060T computers. ARPAnet is regarded as the predecessor to the internet. The original email still exists.
The oldest is Albert Roger Milla (b. 20 May 1952) for Cameroon v. Russia on 28 June 1994, aged 42 yrs 39 days. During this match he also scored making him the oldest scorer in the finals
The oldest international football ground still in use is the Racecourse Ground, Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom. The first international match was played at the Racecourse on 5 March 1877 when Scotland visited Wales. Wales lost the game 2-0 and in fact did not win their first international until 1882 when they defeated Ireland 7-1. Wales are the third oldest international football team after England and Scotland. Although Scotland have always played at ‘Hampden Park’ this has been at various locations. They only started playing at
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The oldest insect ever found is the fossilised Rhyniognatha hirsti, which lived in what is now Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, approximately 410 million years ago – that is 30 million years older than any other known insect fossil! The specimen was first described in 1926 by entomologist, Robin John Tillyard (Australia), who, on finding it to be unremarkable, left it to the vaults of London’s Natural History Museum, UK. It remained there for approximately 80 years until entomologists, David A. Grimaldi and Michael S. Engel (both
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Duff Gibson (Canada, b. 11 August 1966) was aged 39 years 190 days when he won gold in the skeleton on 17 February 2006 at the XX Winter Olympiad in Turin, Italy.