Oldest Living Person

It's getting harder to find stamps depicting centenarians isn't it.
I thought I had hit paydirt with Dame Vera Lynn (1917 - present) but it turned out that Her Majesty's Post had only put her on the outside cover of a stamp booklet back in 1995, and not on the stamps inside. It's philatelic, but....

She was an enormously popular singer (among Allies) during World War II for hits such as "We'll Meet Again" and "The White Cliffs of Dover." She is apparently the oldest living recording artist to top the GB music charts with a compilation album released in 2014 when she was 97.

France
Gilberto Bosques
July 17, 2015
The se-tenant pair depicts Gilberto Bosques (1892-1995), a Mexican career diplomat and a consul in Marseille, Vichy France. He took initiative to rescue tens of thousands of Jews and Spanish Republican exiles from being deported to Nazi Germany or Spain.

Liu Haisu (1895-1994)




https://www.britannica.com/biography/Liu-Haisu
https://baike.sogou.com/v214502.htm...%B7%E7%B2%9F

The disputed case of Jeanne Calment

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...d-or-a-fraud

I'm encouraged that she didn't give up smoking until she was 117 ...

22crows very kindly pointed out to me Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (1907-2012), better known as Oscar Niemeyer.

He was a Brazilian architect, most famous for designing the capital city, Brasilia, but also renowned for numerous individual buildings and monuments. Most of his work was in Brazil, but he also planned the University of Haifa, and did work abroad for years while in exile after a military coup (he was a life-long leftist activist, and once was president of the communist party of Brazil).

Brazil has issued quite a few stamps in his honor. Too many in fact to show here, but three of the more salient follow, each conveniently bearing the year of issue:

The first gives a sense of the monumental tendencies, as well as his love of curved forms.


This one is a straightforward homage after his death.



Finally, his Museum which he designed himself, finishing it at age 95!. It looks like a giant stylized eye and is known variously as the Eye Museum or Niemeyer's Eye. Thanks so much for the lead, 22crows!

Huang Binhong (1865-1955)





http://www.chinaonlinemuseum.com/pa...-binhong.php
http://arts.cntv.cn/art/special/hl/hbh/index.shtml

Dame Freya Stark (31 January 1893 – 9 May 1993) Anglo-Italian explorer and prolific travel writer. She ventured repeatedly into areas of the Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan where British citizens were prohibited (the French Syrian Mandate) or Europeans in general had never been (Iran to the Valley of the Assassins). She learned several languages as an adult, used classical texts (e.g., Herodotus) as travel manuals, and discovered several valuable archeological sites. She wrote more than two dozen books about her travels as well as several autobiographical works.

Her Wikipedia entry is really stirring. Thanks 22crows for pointing her out.

During her lifetime the Royal Geographical Society honored Stark with their " Back Award" and their Founders Award for her explorations, and in 2003 The Royal Mail included her in the Great Britain Extreme Endeavours set Scott Sc 2118-23 (SG 2360-65)

Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1861-1862) otherwise known as Sir MV or Dr. M. Visvesvaraya: Indian civil engineer and statesman.

He designed irrigation systems, flood prevention systems, dams, and bridges. Regarded as the father of Indian engineering he also was the Diwan of Mysore from 1912 to 1919 in which capacity he guided a considerable amount of industrial organization and development, road building, founded a bank and a university, etc., etc.

India issued Scott 332 in 1960 on the occasion of his 100th birthday. So another centenarian who got to see his/her own stamp.

Bangladesh honored classical singer Gul Mohammed Khan (1876-1979) with a stamp in 2001 [Michel 770]

Khan's Wikipedia article is quite sparse on detail, but he won a number of awards in his lifetime. Kudos to 22crows for this catch.

He also would fit into the mustache thread with an interesting variety.

Just found this one --
Ravishankar Vyas better known as Ravishankar Maharaj, was an Indian independence activist and social worker from Gujarat.
He just made it to 100 (25 February 1884 - 1 July 1984)
He was one of Ghandi's earliest associates starting back in 1915, went on the Salt March for which he was imprisoned, etc. After independence he was a social worker and elder statesman of Gujarat.

Here is the 1985 stamp from India, Scott 1109.

Portugal
Important Figures in Portuguese Culture
April 18, 2008
Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015) was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter. He was the only filmmaker whose active career spanned from the silent era to the digital age. In March 2008 he was reported to be the oldest active film director in the world. The stamp shows his caricaturistic portrait with a movie camera in the background.

The death of Perez de Cuellar, former UN S-G - and also a lifelong stamp collector

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...lar-obituary

Brazil
Women Who Made History
December 4, 2019
Set of six, one stamp honors Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa (1908-2011), a Brazilian diplomatic clerk who has been recognized with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

Thanks again to 22crows for this one:
Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969) a Belgian–French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, and anarchist. Author of over thirty books, she is best known for her 1924 visit to Lhasa, Tibet, when it was forbidden to foreigners.

France issued the following in 2000 Y&T 3323