By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Maria Esther de Capovilla, the oldest person on Earth according to Guinness World Records, has died of pneumonia at 116 years of age, her granddaughter said.
Capovilla died Sunday at 3 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) in a hospital in the coastal city of Guayaquil two days after getting sick, said her granddaughter Catherine Capovilla. Her funeral was planned for Monday.
Born on Sept. 14, 1889 - the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler - Capovilla traced her lineage to Spanish nobility, but enjoyed drinking donkey milk in her youth. She married in 1917, to an Austrian sailor who visited Ecuador, and was widowed in 1949.
Shortly before she died, she kept repeating, "I want to be young again" and at times called to a dead daughter, asking her "to come, take me with you," another granddaughter Cecilia Icaza said.