Nitan Boan

The oldest living person in the world celebrated turning 117 years old with friends and family in the Sari area of the UK.

Ethel Kiertrum, who lives in a nursing home in the village of Lightwater, Sari, received the title of the oldest person in the world in April 2025; at a time when her sister Inai Kanabaro Lucas, a Brazilian nun, died at the age of 116.

Ethel was born three years before the Titanic disaster and eight years before the Russian Revolution, and witnessed both world wars of the 20th century.

Ethel was 110 years old when she contracted COVID-19 in 2020, and, according to the Guinness World Records, she is among the oldest people to have survived infection with this disease.

Ethel Kiertrum is originally from the village of Shipton Bleniger in Hampshire, England, but grew up in the town of Tidworth in Wiltshire. She was raised in a family with seven siblings and was the second-to-last child in the family.

📷PA