At age 76:
Min Bahadur Sherchan successfully climbed Mount Everest in 2008. He’s the oldest person ever to do it.
Thomas Edison applied for his 1,093rd—and final—patent (1931). The invention: a holder for items being electroplated.
At age 84:
Eamon de Valera won a second term as Ireland’s president (1966), making him the oldest democratically elected head of state in history.
At age 86:
- Doc Paskowitz, subject of the 2007 film Surfwise, still surfed every day.
- Katherine Pelton swam the 200m butterfly in 3:01:14, beating the 85- to 89-year-old men’s record by more than 20 seconds (1992).
At age 87:
- Mary Baker Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor newspaper (1908).
- Bob Hope entertained the troops, traveling with a USO show that went to Saudi Arabia in 1990 during Operation Desert Storm.
At age 88:
Michelangelo drew the architectural plans for Rome’s Santa Maria degli Angeli church (1563).
Betty White won the 2010 Screen Actors Guild award for comedy actress (Hot in Cleveland)…a year after winning SAG’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
At age 90:
Painter Marc Chagall became the first living artist to be exhibited at Paris’s Louvre museum (1977).
At age 92:
Dr. Paul Spangler of San Luis Obispo, California, ran his 14th marathon.
At age 93:
P.G. Wodehouse wrote his 96th book in 1975, the same year he was knighted.
At age 95:
A retired union organizer named Bernard Herzberg earned a Master of Arts in Refugee Studies at the University of East London (2005).
At age 102:
Alice Pollock published her memoir Portrait of My Victorian Youth (1971). It was her first book.