Italian supercentenarian who, before her death at the age of 117 years and 137 days, was the world’s oldest living person whose age had been verified, and the last living person to have been verified as being born in the 1800s. She is the oldest Italian person ever and the second-oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment.
She was the oldest of eight children, two of her sisters died aged 102 and 100. In October 1926, she married Giovanni Martinuzzi (1901–1978), and in 1937 her only child was born but died when he was only six months old. The marriage was not happy, so in 1938 Morano separated from her husband, driving him out of the house; despite the couple’s separation, they remained married until his death in 1978.
Until 1954, she worked at Maioni Industry, a jute factory in her town. She subsequently worked in the kitchen of Collegio Santa Maria, a Marianist boarding school in Pallanza, until her retirement at the age of 75.
Morano was still living alone in her home on her 115th birthday. In 2013, when asked about the secret of her longevity, she said that she ate three eggs a day, drank a glass of homemade grappa, and enjoyed a chocolate sometimes, but, above all, she thought positively about the future. Morano credited her long life to her diet of raw eggs and being single.
On 29 July 2016, she was presented with a certificate from Guinness World Records recognizing her as the oldest person alive. Morano died at her home in Verbania, Italy, on 15 April 2017 at the age of 117. At the time she was the fourth-oldest person in recorded history.
Link to Wikipedia biography