The oldest person in the world — and the oldest ever Japanese person — is Misao Okawa. She lives in Osaka and is 116. She'll be 117 in March.

Okawa is the last living Japanese person to have experienced the 19th century. Not that she can remember much about it: She was born in 1898. But get this: A few years before she was born, a U.S. manufacturer in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was making harpoons for whaling. And in 2007, one of their harpoons, made around 1890, was found in the neck of a bowhead whale caught off Alaska.

That means the whale, which was an adult, was older when it was killed than Okawa is now. And it survived at least one hunting attempt more than 100 years before it was finally caught. It turns out that bowhead whales may be able to survive for at least 200 years — and without the age-related diseases we often succumb to. How do they do it?