I enjoy listening to the elderly - though it doesn't hold as much fascination as it used to....maybe because I'm halfway there myself!
Anyways, a man who's grandpa fought in the American Civil War (War Between the States depending on what side of the Mason-Dixon Line you live) passed at 114. Interesting to hear a memory recollected from 111 years ago!
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23941958-life-tips-by-man-who-lived-to-114.do
The reader view at the bottom is interesting - I'll post an excerpt here:
This man mentioning his grandpa who fought in the Civil War reminds me of a story I read somewhere else:
---------------
"I'll never forget visiting my grandfather in a VA hospital when I was maybe five years old. There was a very, very old man there, and my dad took me over to talk to him. He asked me if I knew who Abraham Lincoln was, and I said that he'd been a president a long time ago. The old man told me to shake hands with him. Afterward, he told me that when he was about my age he'd shaken hands with Abraham Lincoln.
I remember thinking later that, as a boy, he might also have shaken hands with an old man who, when he was young boy, had shaken hands with George Washington or Thomas Jefferson."
Robert Bruce Thompson