INTERNATIONAL
World’s oldest person dead at 117
The world’s oldest living person died on Saturday, April 15, at the age of 117.
Emma Morano was the last person known to be born on Nov. 29, 1899. She lived in Italy and held the Guinness World Record for the oldest living person and oldest living woman.
Morano told the New York Times that she credits her long life to ending her abusive marriage in 1938 and her diet of raw eggs and cookies. She loved cookies so much that she would hide them under her pillow so that other people would not eat them.
She became the world’s oldest person in 2016 after American Susannah Mushatt Jones passed away at 116 years old. Morano was five years younger than the oldest person ever, 122-year-old Jeanne Calment, when she died.
Guinness said they will announce the new oldest living person after reviewing evidence, as reported by CNN. They said the oldest living man is Israel Kristal, an 113-year-old Holocaust survivor.
NATIONAL
First woman runner of Boston Marathon returns to race
Katherine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, returned to the race on Monday, April 17, for the first time since she made her historical run 50 years ago. She wore the same number that many of the other racers tried to pull off of her.
When Switzer ran the Boston Marathon the first time, she was a 20-year-old college student at Syracuse University. Now at 70-years-old, she has run 39 marathons. This is her first race since 2011.
After running the Boston Marathon in 1967, Switzer became a national icon and advocate for women’s equality in sports.
Switzer told CNN that she did not enter the marathon intending to make a change. Roberta Bingay Gibb had competed in the Boston Marathon the year before, but ran it unregistered.
“Everything changed,” she said. “I said, ‘This is going to change my life, maybe going to change women’s sports and change the world.’”
LOCAL
Google buys land near Tesla factory
The Wall Street Journal broke news on Monday, April 17, that Google bought a 1,210-acre piece of land the week before near the Tesla factory outside of Reno. The company said they plan to build a new data center.
The land could also be a space for the company to test Waymo self-driving cars.
Google is currently backing a bill in the Nevada Legislature that would make self-driving test restrictions less strict than those in California.
Google does not have plans to break ground on construction of the new data center right away, but TechCrunch thinks it is unlikely the company will wait very long before they start building.
The purchase of land comes after Tesla bought land at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. The company is building a $5 billion factory to produce an estimated 500,000 battery packs for their electric cars and will employ 6,500 people once operational. More companies have bought land at the industrial center since Tesla’s purchase.
Madeline Purdue can be reached at mpurdue@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @madelinepurdue.
