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Feeling old? Well, you're an applesauce-smeared toddler next to Rebecca Lanier, a great-great-great-great grandmother from Ohio who turned 119 today.

You read that correctly: Rebecca's so old, she's in her teens again. Born to slave parents from Mississippi in 1892, Lanier has witnessed the inauguration of 22 presidents, the birth of aviation, women's right to vote, and the release of the iPad 2. But is she the oldest person alive? Yes! And by a margin of five years, according to the people who keep track of such things. So why won't Guinness World Records acknowledge that? Because they're birthers, that's why.

Which is to say, they require proof of age in the form of a valid birth certificate — something slave families were denied at that time in the South. Lanier does have a letter from the Social Security Administration that verifies the year of her birth as being 1892, but apparently Guinness isn't satisfied. "‘It's quite a rigorous process that you go through," their rep told the Daily Mail. "Because the birth certificate is a crucial matter." Is it me, or do these guys take themselves a little seriously for an agency that also regulates the record for Most Cockroaches Eaten in One Minute? If ever there's ever been a case for the do-gooding hordes of the internet, this is it. There's already a Twitter page and Facebook petition to get Lanier into the Guinness Book of World Records. Let's all pitch in, and make one 119-year-old's birthday wish come true. Now blow out your candles, great-great-great-great grandma!

[Daily Mail]