Jimmy Carter - 100th Birthday

Jimmy Carter celebrates his 100th birthday today making him the first US president to reach the milestone.

Carter, a Democrat who served in the White House from 1977 to 1981, has spent the past 19 months in hospice care in his home state of Georgia.

But the former peanut farmer, who first entered politics in the 1960s as a state senator, is "emotionally engaged and still having experiences and laughing, loving," his grandson, Jason, said in September.

And the centenarian still has political ambitions: "I'm only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris" in November's election, the humanitarian and Nobel Prize recipient said, according to his grandson.

To honour the occasion, volunteers with Habitat for Humanity - the housing charity Carter has worked with for 40 years - are building 30 homes in Minnesota this week.

There will also be events in Plains, the former Georgia governor's hometown, to celebrate the occasion. There will be a flyover of military jets and 100 new citizens will have naturalisation ceremonies in his honour.

It comes after a star-studded concert was held in Atlanta, Georgia, last month to celebrate the 39th president's milestone birthday and to raise funds for The Carter Center.

"It was an incredible evening, full of good music and heartfelt tributes, and it made history as the first-ever 100th birthday celebration for a living American president," Carter said at the time.

The concert, which raised more than $1.2m (£900,000) and also featured recorded messages from other presidents, will air on Georgia Public Broadcasting on Tuesday. Dozens of musical acts performed at the event and thousands attended.

The former president will be watching the broadcast today, his family said.

Carter, who was not able to attend the concert in person, made a rare public appearance in November 2023 when he attended a memorial service for his wife Rosalynn who died aged 96 earlier that month.

Their 77-year marriage remains the longest of any first couple.

When Carter first entered hospice care in Plains, Georgia, in February 2023, some relatives reportedly felt he only had a matter of days left to live.

“It’s a gift," Josh Carter, another of his grandsons, said of the last few months in a recent interview with the New York Times. “It’s a gift that I didn’t know we were going to get."

Others say Carter's story has also raised awareness of the benefits of hospice care. "We are all rooting for Jimmy Carter," Barbara Pearce, the CEO of Connecticut Hospice, told the BBC's US partner CBS News.

"He has done more for us than we could ever do for ourselves by pointing out that it's a reasonable choice to make," she said. "He's given everybody permission to consider [hospice care] as a reasonable option that doesn't shorten their life, but does increase their comfort and fulfilment."

Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office. He created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. Carter successfully pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He also confronted stagflation. His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education. The end of his presidency was marked by the Iran hostage crisis, an energy crisis, the Three Mile Island accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the invasion, Carter escalated the Cold War by ending détente, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviets, enunciating the Carter Doctrine, and leading the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. He lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee.

After leaving the presidency, Carter established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights; in 2002 he received a Nobel Peace Prize for related work. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and further the eradication of infectious diseases. Carter is a key figure in the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He has also written numerous books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, while continuing to comment on global affairs, including two books on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Polls of historians and political scientists generally rank Carter as a below-average president, though scholars and the public more favorably view his post-presidency, the longest in U.S. history.

Carter survived stage 4 brain cancer which had spread to his liver at the age of 91 and taught Sunday school well into his 90s.

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Happy 100th Birthday President Carter 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳