Famous 96 Years Old

Known as a typical Hitchcock Blonde, Tippi Hedren soared to fame with her roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marnie. An animal rights activist, too, she set up the Roar Foundation and the Shambala Preserve, after witnessing the plight of the animals that are used for shoots.

Joanne Woodward is best remembered for her Academy Award-winning performance as three characters in The Three Faces of Eve, and for her multiple award-winning TV projects. The first entertainer to get a Hollywood Walk of Fame “star,” she was also in the news for her marriage to Paul Newman.

Retired actress Vera Miles is best known for her role in the classic 1960 film Psycho and its sequel. Crowned Miss Kansas in 1948, she ended up becoming the third runner-up in the Miss America contest. She started acting soon after and formed a close professional relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in many of his films.

The only woman to ever serve as the president of Nicaragua, Violeta Chamorro, was born to an affluent cattle rancher and was mostly educated in the U.S. She was married to La Prensa heir Pedro Joaquim Chamorro Cardenal and later took over the operations of the paper.

Born to a popular politician father and a socialite mother, John Julius Norwich was educated at Eton and later served the navy. A diplomat, historian, and traveler, he is known for his books such as Absolute Monarchs and for hosting documentaries such as Maestro and the BBC radio show My Word!

Tunisian-born French artist Micheline Roquebrune is best known as legendary actor Sean Connery’s second wife. Roquebrune had met Connery in Morocco in the 1970s. They mostly lived in their resort in Marbella and in the Bahamas. Connery was her third husband, and following his death, she revealed he had dementia.

Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Eric Kandel is known for his research on the role of synapses in memory and learning. An Austrian Jew, he left his country with his family and moved to the U.S. in the wake of anti-Semitism. A doctor, specializing in psychiatry, he later taught at Columbia University.

Mochtar Riady is an Indonesian financial magnate. He is best known as the founder of Lippo Group where he is currently serving as Chairman Emeritus. Lippo Group, a multinational conglomerate company, was founded by Mochtar Riady in 1950. The company has a collective presence across North America and Asia. 

Werner Arber is a Swiss geneticist and microbiologist whose discovery of restriction endonucleases earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978; he shared the award with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Smith. Arber's work alongside Nathans and Smith led to the progression of recombinant DNA technology. Werner Arber is also credited with co-founding the World Cultural Council.

Nobel Prize-winning Austrian-American theoretical chemist Martin Karplus has been associated with Harvard University as a professor of chemistry. The Vienna-born scientist had escaped the Nazis to move to the US. Best known for developing multiscale models for complex chemical systems, he has also worked at Columbia University and the University of Strasbourg.

Alfred Moisiu is a former Albanian military general turned diplomat and politician.  The oldest son of Albanian Army general, Spiro Moisiu, he was ambitious from the beginning and received a Ph.D. in military science. After a successful military career, he entered politics and went on to serve as the president of Albania from 2002 to 2007. 

German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas is counted among the most influential philosophers across the world and is identified with the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He influenced many disciplines through his work which addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere, and includes topics starting from social-political theory to aesthetics, language to philosophy of religion, and epistemology.

Lady Pamela Hicks is a British aristocrat best known as the daughter of Edwina Mountbatten and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Lady Pamela Hicks' memoirs of her time in India during the Indian Independence revealed important details surrounding the event, including her mother's extra-marital relationship with the future Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Geneticist Franklin W. Stahl is best known for being part of the Meselson-Stahl experiment with Matthew Meselson and thus demonstrating the mode of DNA replication. The Harvard alumnus later taught at the University of Oregon and was also associated with the American Cancer Society and the National Academy of Sciences.

Imelda Marcos is a retired Filipino politician with a controversial history. She became the First Lady of the Philippines in 1965 when her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, became President of the nation. Her family stole billions of dollars from the country’s citizens and lived lavishly. The Marcoses were unseated during the People Power Revolution in February 1986.