Maria Olivia da Silva

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Maria Olivia da Silva (born February 28, 1880?) is a Brazilian woman who is Brazil's oldest living person, 2005, according to RankBrasil. If her age claim of 125 years old were true, this would make her the oldest person ever recorded and the oldest living person in the world. So far, no one has applied to Guinness World Records. Moreover, so far RankBrasil has only been able to produce documents dating from the 1970s or later. The birth certificate indicating she was born in 1880 shown on the RankBrasil website was issued quite recently.

She was born in Itapetininga, São Paulo and lives in Astorga, Paraná.

The sudden emergence in March 2005 of a claim to be ten years older than any documented living person is highly questionable, according to critics. She has also been preceded, in the previous five years, by at least two other Brazilian women who failed to provide documentation to support similar claims of record age. At the time, the Guinness World Records website, considered then 114-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, born June 29, 1890 as the worlds oldest person and later retrospectively accepted the claims of Maria Capovilla who was aged 115 at that time.

Da Silva was married twice and has outlived all but three of her 14 children - four of them were adopted. Her memory is impressive and she loves to talk. Da Silva lives with her 58-year-old adopted son, Aparecido H. Silva.

On February 28th 2006, Maria quietly celebrated her '126th' birthday, as it was apparent that her claim was not going to be accepted as official by international sanctioning bodies.