Olive Riley

Olive Riley
Born 20 October 1899
Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia
Died 12 July 2008 (aged 108)
Woy Woy, New South Wales, Australia
Nationality Australian
Known for World's oldest blogger

Olive Riley (20 October 1899 – 12 July 2008) was an Australian centenarian woman, born in Broken Hill, New South Wales, believed for a time to have been the world's oldest online personal blogger.[1] (politician Ruth Hamilton of Orlando, Florida was later found to be older and also a blogger).

Blog sites

She began her blog The Life of Riley in February 2007 at the age of 107 and made her final post on 26 June 2008 from a nursing home in Woy Woy, New South Wales, complaining of a cough about two weeks before she died at the age of 108. She had posted over 70 entries, as well as several video posts on YouTube.[2]

Documentary Film

Her blog (or "blob" as she called it) began soon after the release of a film about her, All About Olive, directed by documentary filmmaker Michael Rubbo and released in 2005. Rubbo gave Olive a co-directing credit, making her the oldest director in the world. The blog was suggested by Eric Shackle, a journalist in his late eighties, who was interested in promoting the idea that one is never too old for the internet.

Since Olive could not see well enough to type, Mike set up the blog for her and ran it for next two years with Eric's help, recording her stories, at first on audio and then later on video, to post over 100 YouTube items, all still visible today, as is her archive at mike.mikerubbo.com.[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "'Oldest' blogger dies, aged 108". BBC News. 14 July 2008. Retrieved 26 July 2008.
  2. ↑ Ahmed, Saeed (14 July 2008). "'World's oldest blogger' dies at 108". CNN. Retrieved 26 July 2008.
  3. ↑ McKenny, Leesha (2008): "World's oldest blogger loved Swans, a shandy and spinning great yarns", The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July 2008

External links