The BBC really is a gem. This photo was on the site today as one of those received from folks world-wide to celebrate early Scots photography:

Five generations of women are pictured together in this 1870 snap sent in by John Baird from Arizona. He said: "The photo was taken in Alloa and left to me by my mother who died two years ago. The baby is my great-grandmother. I remember being told that the 'old lady' on the right smoked a corncob pipe and drank homemade spirits all her life - she lived to be 105. I believe this story because my grandmother made it to 103 - no pipe or homemade spirits though."

So the lady to the right has a very good chance of being born before the year 1800. Amazing. Like a photo of me seen by someone in 2190. I have always found this remoteness in time over the course of one's life fascinating - like having met people who fought in the Boer War and also maybe people who will live to see past 2100. Generation skipping degrees of separation. I recall in undergrad English (in 1982) a senior citizen student saying that as a teen in 1932 or so he had met some elderly person who when they themselves were a teen, say in around 1872, had met an aged Bronte sister - and who relayed some passing remark about the book by her that we were reading.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if that was crap? Damn! They all died before 1850. Bad bad lying old English undergrad class guy.