Background
Emma Martina Luigia Morano was born on 29 November 1899 in Civiasco, Vercelli, Piedmont, Italy to Giovanni Morano and Matilde Bresciani, the eldest of eight children, five daughters and three sons.
Emma Martina Luigia Morano was born on 29 November 1899 in Civiasco, Vercelli, Piedmont, Italy to Giovanni Morano and Matilde Bresciani, the eldest of eight children, five daughters and three sons.
She is the oldest verified Italian person ever, the second oldest person from Europe ever behind Jeanne Calment, one of the ten oldest people ever and the last living European person to have been born in the 19th century. When she was a child, she moved from the Sesia Valley to Ossola for her father"s job, but the climate was so unhealthy there that a physician advised her family to live somewhere with a milder climate so she moved to Pallanza, on Lake Maggiore, where she still lives. Despite that the couple always remained formally married.
Until 1954, she was a worker for the Maioni Industry, a jute factory in her town.
Then, she had another job, in the kitchen of "Collegio Santa Maria," a Marianist boarding school in Pallanza, until she was 75, when she retired. Later life
Morano was still living alone in her home on her 115th birthday.
When asked about the secret of her longevity, she said that she had never used drugs, eats three eggs a day, drinks a glass of homemade brandy, and savors a chocolate sometimes, but, above all, she thinks positively about the future. Morano credits her long life to her diet of raw eggs and being single.
In 2011, Morano was visited as part of a worldwide study conducted by George Church for Harvard Medical School of Boston, to study the secret of her longevity.
Morano became the oldest living person in Italy and Europe after the death of Maria Redaelli on 2 April 2013. On the occasion of her 114th birthday, she gave a short live television interview to a Radiotelevisione Italiana show. On her 116th birthday, Morano received congratulations from Pope Francis.