MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

World's oldest woman, 116, dies in Ecuador

María Esther de Capovilla, the oldest person on Earth according to Guinness World Records, has died of pneumonia at 116, her granddaughter said.

Capovilla died on Sunday at 3am local time in a hospital in the coastal city of Guayaquil two days after getting sick, said her granddaughter Catherine Capovilla. Her funeral was planned for yesterday.

Born on Sept. 14, 1889 ? the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler ? Capovilla traced her lineage to Spanish nobility, but enjoyed drinking donkey milk in her youth. She married in 1917, to an Austrian sailor who visited Ecuador, and was widowed in 1949.

Shortly before she died, she kept repeating, ??I want to be young again'' and at times called to a dead daughter, asking her ??to come, take me with you,'' another granddaughter Cecilia Icaza said.

??My dear grandmother came down with a small cold'' last week, she said. ??She spent most of her time in bed. She was very weak. We checked her into the military hospital in Guayaquil, where she got worse and died.''

Robert Young, senior consultant for Gerontology for Guinness World Records, said Elizabeth Bolden, of Memphis, Tennessee, is the likely successor as the oldest person. Emiliano Mercado Del Toro, of Puerto Rico, retains the title as oldest man. He turned 115 last week.

Capovilla's father was a colonel in Ecuador's army. In her youth, she liked to embroider, paint, play piano and dance the waltz at parties, the family said. She also visited a nearby plantation, where she would drink fresh milk from donkeys as well as cows. Later, she wed Antonio Capovilla.

Three of their five children ? Irma, 79, Hilda, 81, and son Aníbal, 78 ? are still alive, along with about a dozen grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren, the two granddaughters said. They disagreed, however, on the number of great-great grandchildren ? with one saying there are two and the other saying five.

Capovilla always ate three meals a day and never smoked or drank hard liquor ? ??Only a small cup of wine with lunch and nothing more,'' Irma said last December.

Young said Capovilla's claim to the title as oldest person was particularly significant because of the wealth of supporting documentation her family provided to prove her age was authentic.

Capovilla ??had baptismal records, marriage records, children's birth certificates, she had an ID card, and she had several other records too, including doctors records,'' Young said.

??When the planet Pluto was discovered, she was like 41 years old. She was like 22 years old when the Titanic sank.''