Image copyright Reuters Image caption Emma Morano celebrated among friends with a cake at her home in Verbania on Tuesday 
 
 When Emma Morano was born, Umberto I was still reigning over Italy, Fiat had only just been established and Milan Football Club was still a few weeks off creation. 
 
 On Tuesday, this otherwise unassuming woman marked her 117th birthday, looking back on a life which has not only spanned three centuries but also survived an abusive marriage which started with blackmail, the loss of her only son and a diet which most would describe as anything but balanced. 
 
 Ms Morano, the oldest of eight siblings, all of whom she has outlived, was born on 29 November 1899 in the Piedmont region of Italy. 
 
 This year, she officially became the world's oldest living woman after American Susannah Mushatt Jones died in May. She is also officially the last person still living born in the 1800s. 
 
 Raw eggs and biscuits 
 
 Ms Morano's longevity, she admits, is partly down to genetics - her mother reached 91 and several sisters reached their centenary - and partly, she says, down to a rather unusual diet of three eggs - two raw - each day for more than 90 years. 
 
 It was a regime she took up as a young woman, after the doctor diagnosed her with anaemia shortly after World War One. 
 
 These days, she has cut down to just two eggs a day, and a few biscuits. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Pictures in Emma Morano's flat show her as an 18-month-old girl at the turn of the 20th Century and aged 43 
 
 It does defy all accepted advice on healthy living, her doctor of 27 years, Carlo Bava, told AFP news agency: 
 
 "Emma has always eaten very few vegetables, very little fruit. 
 
 "When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner." 
 
 Despite this, he noted, she seems to be "eternal". 
 
 'Marry me or I'll kill you' 
 
 There is one other thing Ms Morano credits with her longevity: kicking her husband out in 1938, the year after her baby boy died, aged just six months. 
 
 The marriage had never been healthy, according to Ms Morano. She had been in love with a boy killed during World War One and had no interest in marrying someone else. 
 
 But, she told La Stampa newspaper in an interview when she was a spritely 112, she was left with little choice. 
 
 "He told me: 'If you're lucky you marry me, or I'll kill you'. I was 26 years old. I got married. " 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Doctor Carlo Bava, pictured with Ms Morano on her birthday, jokes she might be immortal 
 
 Eventually, it became too much. Though she kicked him out they remained married until he died in 1978. Ms Morano, who worked until she was 75, chose never to marry again. 
 
 "I didn't want to be dominated by anyone," she told the New York Times. 
 
 It is this determination which has inspired a special musical performance, telling the story of her life in prose and dance. The show was being performed in the northern Italian town of Verbania, her home for the majority of her long life. 
 
 The play, the writers say, "represents the feminine courage which rebelled against domestic violence". 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Ms Morano received a greeting from Italy's president Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday morning 
 
 Ms Morano herself has not left her two-room flat for 20 years but she was surrounded by well-wishers on Tuesday who took part in her birthday celebrations. 
 
 Among them was Mr Bava, who is starting to feel the pressure, a bit like "the keeper of the Tower of Pisa". 
 
 "The day it topples over, someone will be held responsible," he told AFP. "When Emma dies, people will hold me accountable." ||||| ROME (Reuters) - Emma Morano, who at 117 was believed to be the world’s oldest person and the last surviving child of the 19th century, died on Saturday, swearing to the end on her diet of two raw eggs a day. 
 
 Emma Morano, thought to be the world's oldest person and the last to be born in the 1800s, is seen during her 117th birthday in her house in Verbania, northern Italy November 29, 2016. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo 
 
 “She reached an incredible finish line,” said Silvia Marchionini, mayor of the town of Verbania in northern Italy where Morano lived on the shores of Lake Maggiore. 
 
 Morano, who lived 117 years and 137 days, was born on Nov. 29, 1899, four years before the Wright brothers first took to the air. Her life spanned three centuries, two World Wars and more than 90 Italian governments. 
 
 “My life wasn’t so nice,” she told Reuters last November on her 117th birthday. 
 
 “I worked in a factory until I was 65, then that was that,” she said as she sat in an armchair by her window, a white shawl over her shoulders. 
 
 In an interview with La Stampa newspaper five years ago she said her fiance had died in World War One and that she had then been forced to marry a man she did not love. 
 
 “‘Either you agree to marry me or I will kill you’,” Morano said, recalling his proposal. “I was 26. We got married.” 
 
 It was not a happy marriage. They had a son in 1937, but the baby died after just six months and the following year Morano kicked out her abusive husband. 
 
 “I separated from him in 1938. I think I was one of the first in Italy to do that.” 
 
 Morano outlived all her eight brothers and sisters, including one who died at 102. She thrived on an unorthodox, unbalanced diet. 
 
 “When I first knew her she used to eat three eggs a day. Two raw, and one fried. Today she has slowed down a bit, reducing the number to two some days because she says three can be too much,” her doctor, Carlo Bava, said last year. 
 
 “She has never eaten much fruit or vegetables. Her characteristic is that she always eats the same thing, every day, every week, every month and every year.” 
 
 Marchionini, the mayor of Verbania, told the Italian news agency AGI that her city has more than 20 people aged over 100.
– Emma Morano lived across three centuries, two world wars, and more than 90 Italian governments. And on Saturday, friends and family of Morano, believed to be the oldest woman alive, reported her death at home in Italy, Reuters reports. She was 117. According to the BBC, Morano was born on Nov. 29, 1899 and was believed to be the only person born in the 19th century still alive. Morano credited her long life to genetics—a number of her sisters lived to 100—and her diet. For more than 90 years—after being diagnosed with anemia—Morano had eaten three eggs per day. Her longtime doctor says Morano subsisted on two raw eggs in the morning, an omelette for lunch, and chicken for dinner—almost never consuming fruits or vegetables.