Emma Martina Luigia Morano (29 November 1899 – 15 April 2017) was an Italian supercentenarian who, prior to her death at the age of 117 years and 137 days, was the world's oldest living person whose age had been verified, and the last living person to have been verified as being born in the 1800s.

She was the oldest Italian person ever, the second oldest European person ever behind Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, and one of the five verified oldest people ever.

Early life

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 had a long-lived family: her mother, an aunt and some of her siblings turned 90, and one of her sisters, Angela Morano (1908–2011), died at age 102.

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 Verbania, on Lake Maggiore, where she lived the rest of her life. In October 1926, she married Giovanni Martinuzzi (1901–1978), and her only child was born in 1937 but died when he was only six months old. The marriage was not a happy one, so in 1938 Morano separated from her husband, driving him out of the house; he died in 1978.

Later life

Until 1954, Morano worked at Maioni Industry, a jute factory in her town. She subsequently worked in the kitchen of Collegio Santa Maria, a Marianist boarding school in Verbania, until her retirement at the age of 75.

In 2011, Morano was visited as part of a worldwide study conducted by George Church for Harvard Medical School, to study the secret of her longevity. In December of that year, she was awarded the honor of Knight of Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Giorgio Napolitano.

In 2013, when asked about the secret of her longevity, she said that she had never used drugs, ate three eggs a day, drank a glass of homemade brandy, and enjoyed a chocolate sometimes, but, above all, she thought positively about the future. She was still living alone in her home on her 115th birthday. In 2016 she credited her long life to her diet of raw eggs and staying single.

Morano became the oldest living person in Italy and Europe after the death of Maria Redaelli on 2 April 2013. On her 114th birthday, she gave a short live TV interview to a RAI show. On her 116th birthday, Morano received congratulations from Pope Francis.

She surpassed the age of Venere Pizzinato in August 2014 and Dina Manfredini (who died in the United States) in August 2015, to become the oldest Italian person ever. On 13 May 2016, upon the death of American woman Susannah Mushatt Jones, Morano became the world's oldest living person and also the last living person verified to have been born in the 1800s. On 29 July 2016, she was presented with a certificate from Guinness World Records recognizing her as the oldest person alive. Festivities celebrating her 117th birthday on 29 November 2016 were broadcast live in Italy.

Morano died at her home in Verbania, Italy, on 15 April 2017, at the age of 117. Her cause of death has not been released and is still unknown. At the time she was the oldest person alive and one of the five oldest people in recorded history. She was recognized as the last living person born in the 1800s whose age had been independently verified. Upon Morano's death, Violet Brown became the world's oldest person.