Georgina Harwood: Watch How This 100-Year-Old Great-Grandma Celebrates Her 100th Birthday [Video]
You can almost hear Georgina Harwood yell “YOLO!” in this video of the great-grandma celebrating her birthday in a rather unusual way. And indeed, Harwood, like everyone else, may “only live once,” but she has lived a lot longer that most people. Harwood celebrated her 100th birthday Saturday — by jumping out of an airplane from 12,000 feet in the air.
The new centenarian wasn’t alone — another 15 members of her family made their way to Cape Town, South Africa, to support Georgina in her amazing, if somewhat risky, aerial birthday party. They didn’t just stand on the ground and wait for her to land, either.
The rest of Harwood’s family also took part in the skydive, jumping out of the plane three at a time.
The great-granny also had a little help from professional skydiver Jason Baker, who piloted the tandem jump — a type of skydiving that allows untrained skydivers to jump while strapped to a pro who is actually in control of the dive.
Amazingly, the 100th birthday skydive was actually the third time that Georgina Harwood parachuted from an airplane. But it’s an activity she took up recently. Her first jump came at the sprightly young age of 92.
After landing safely, she celebrated further with a cocktail.
So what was it like to free fall from an airplane at the age of 100?
“It was wonderful, it was exhilarating,” she told members of the press, who came to Cape Town to report on the story. “I’m trying to think of the adjectives I can add to, but it is very difficult, there are so many adjectives. But it was definitely a very special, exhilarating experience, even this jump seemed to be a little bit different from the previous ones.”
But Harwood’s jump wasn’t simply a stunt to add a little spice to her 100-year life (so far). She was also raising money for her favorite cause, South Africa’s National Sea Rescue Institute.
Georgina Harwood is not done yet celebrating her life that began when World War I was still raging, the President of the United States was Woodrow Wilson, and Harwood’s native South Africa was still colonized by the British Empire. She plans to continue the 100th birthday party on Monday, March 16 — by cage diving with deadly sharks.
Watch the video of Georgina Harwood turning 100-years-old by skydiving, on this page, above.