The Oldest Person in the World Dies Fairly Frequently
When we heard the sad news late Tuesday that the world's oldest person, Maria Gomes Valentim of Brazil (pictured above), had died of multiple organ failure only a couple weeks before her 115th birthday, we wondered, "Didn't we just cover the world's oldest person dying?" In fact, we hadn't--it was the world's oldest man. But the question got us thinking. One reasonably can't expect the second-oldest person in the world at any given moment to live much longer than the oldest. So, how often is the oldest person in the world dying, and the media covering it?
