A 114-year-old Indiana woman who became the world's oldest person this week celebrated the distinction Thursday with a slice of her favorite cake.Edna Parker, who has outlived her husband, children and siblings, was confirmed as the world's oldest known person when Yone Mnagawa, a Japanese woman four months her senior, died on Monday.
Dressed in a pink polka-dot dress and costume pearl jewelry, Parker was wheeled before television cameras and reporters Thursday in a dining room at the central Indiana nursing home where she lives. Clutching two old photographs — including one from the early 1900s of her and her sisters wearing floppy hats — she shook her head when reminded of her feat of longevity.
"It's hard to believe," she said.
Parker was born April 20, 1893, the year Lizzie Borden was acquitted in the ax murders of her father and stepmother. She taught for a few years in a two-room schoolhouse, but as was the custom of that era, her teaching career ended with her marriage to Earl Parker. She became a farmer's wife, preparing meals for as many as a dozen men who worked on her husband's farm.
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