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Maria Branyas was the world’s oldest person. She died on August 19 at 117 years of age. Her family shared the news on her social-media account. “She has gone the way she wanted,” they wrote. “In her sleep, at peace, and without pain.”
Branyas became the world’s oldest person in January 2023. That’s according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Branyas was born in 1907, in San Francisco, California. She moved to Spain in 1915. She lived through the Spanish flu pandemic, which lasted from 1918 to 1920.
A hundred years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Branyas became famous in Spain. In May 2020, she became the oldest person to successfully recover from COVID-19 at the time.