Gertrude Baines, the oldest person known to those who keep such records, has died in Los Angeles at age 115.

Baines, a former Ohio State University maid, likely died of a heart attack, her doctor has said according to news reports but an autopsy is planned to ascertain the cause of death.

Born in 1894 in a small Georgia town, two years before the Supreme Court decided the Plessy vs. Ferguson case which made the tragic farce of "separate but equal" race segregation the law of the land, she lived to vote for the nation's first African American president.

 

According to the Associated Press:

The oldest person in the world is now Kama Chinen, 114, who lives in Japan, according to Dr. L. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks claims of extreme old age. Chinen was born May 10, 1895, Coles said.

The oldest person who has ever lived is Jeanne-Louise Calment, according to Coles. She was 122 when she died Aug. 4, 1997, in Arles, France...

"Living that long is like winning the genetic lottery," Robert Young, a scientist and senior consultant with Guinness World Records, said at her birthday party in April.

Nurses at Western Convalescent Hospital described Baines as a modest woman who liked to watch the "Jerry Springer Show" and eat fried chicken, bacon and ice cream. She refused to use dentures.

"I don't know how she does it. She only has her gums, no teeth," said Susie Exconde, the nursing director who found Baines dead in her bed at about 7:25 a.m.

Witt, her physician, said that when he visited Baines earlier this week, she only complained that her bacon was soggy and arthritis was causing pain in her right knee.