According to United Nations population projections, close to 1 in 20 American boomers are expected to live to 100, thanks to breakthroughs in treatments for heart disease and cancer, lives relatively free of hard labor and longstanding memberships at the gym. Those centenarians may not even be the most senior members of society, either — the National Institute on Aging predicts that the boomers will be playing bridge with a growing number of people 110 and older, or supercentenarians.

Today, [Opal] Neerman and her family will celebrate her 110th birthday, about as close to immortality as the human species will allow. There are only 45 people living worldwide who are verified to be as old as Neerman.

"I don't feel 110," said Neerman, a former librarian who lives in Apopka. "More like 99."

It's an elite club she is joining, the "supercentenarians."

It has often been stated that the oldest known person in Canada was Pierre Joubert of Quebec, who died at the age of 113 years in 1814. There is evidence, however, of an even older person; according to the Halifax British Colonist newspaper of Jan. 20, 1852, Daniel Weekes of Ship Harbour, N.S., was 116 years old at the time of his death on Dec. 29, 1851, having been born on Dec. 3, 1735.

If so, Weekes lived to be more than two years older than the super-centenarian Mr. Joubert.