As a culture we tend to praise accomplishments as if there were an age limit. We like to focus on achievements made by people under a “certain age” as if we think “The younger, the better!” But achievements, major accomplishments, even fame and fortune, don’t have a cut-off age.
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating accomplishments and great deeds done by a specific age, but we’d like to take time here to point out that major accomplishments are achieved regardless of age. Below is just a sampling of some of the amazing things done by older adults of all ages, arranged alphabetically and in no order of greatness.
Author Harry Bernstein publishes his first book, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers—age 96
Paul C?©zanne has his first solo art exhibition‚Äîage 56
Julia Child begins the long running The French Chef program on PBS—age 51
Jack Cover invents the Taser stun gun to create a nonlethal weapon—age 50
Benjamin Franklin signs the Declaration of Independence—age 70
Cancer survivor Barbara Hillary becomes one of the oldest people, and first black woman, to reach the North Pole—age 75
Edmond Hoyle begins recording the rules of various card games, publishing A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist in 1742—age 70
Kathryn Joosten, Emmy Award-winning actress of Family Matters, Desperate Housewives, and The West Wing, begins TV-acting—age 56
Mark Jordan sets the World Record in 2015 for most pull-ups in 24 hours—age 54
Ray Kroc begins the McDonald’s franchise—age 52
Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa—age 75
Famed American Folk painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses, aka “Grandma Moses,” begins painting—age 76
Frank McCourt publishes Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Angela’s Ashes—age 65
Taikichiro Mori leaves academia for second career in Tokyo real estate, where he would eventually become the most successful person in the Tokyo real estate market and twice become Forbes’s “world’s richest man”—age 55
Leslie Nielsen stars in comedy-hit Airplane!—age 54
Nola Ochs graduates from Fort Hays State University and becomes the oldest person in the world to become a college graduate—age 95
James Parkinson identifies what will later be named “Parkinson’s disease”—age 62
John Pemberton invents Coca-Cola—age 55
Diana Nyad becomes the first confirmed person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage—age 64
Peter Mark Roget publishes first edition of Roget’s Thesaurus (originally titled, Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition)—age 73
Minoru Saito becomes the oldest person to do a solo circumnavigation of the globe without stopping at any port—age 77
Colonel Harland David Sanders begins the KFC franchise—age 65
Judge Judy Scheindlin begins the now longest-running courtroom TV show, Judy Judy—age 53
Ernestine Shepherd, former world’s oldest competitive female bodybuilder, begins bodybuilding—age 56
J.R.R. Tolkien publishes The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of the Lord of the Rings trilogy—age 62
Betty White becomes the first woman to win a Daytime Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Game Show Host—age 61
Laura Ingalls Wilder publishes Little House in the Big Woods, the first of the Little House books—age 64
Whose major achievement are you fascinated by? What are your own accomplishments? Leave us a comment below or send us an email if you’d like us to share them! Whether it‚Äôs breaking a record, fulfilling a lifelong dream, standing out in your industry, or just doing something you‚Äôre proud of, every day is an opportunity for your own achievement‚ÄîNo matter your age!