Jimmy Carter turns 100: Now and then

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, turned 100 years old on Tuesday. 

Carter, who reached the century mark on Oct. 1, currently remains under home hospice care. He was born James Earl Carter Jr. in 1924.

Carter was a little-known Georgia governor when he began his bid for the presidency ahead of the 1976 election. He went on to narrowly defeat then-President Gerald R. Ford, capitalizing as a Washington outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

Carter served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, a landslide loss that ultimately paved the way for his decades of global advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights via The Carter Center.

Here are some notable markers for the former president over his long life.

Carter is the longest-lived president 

Carter has lived through 40% of U.S. history since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and more than a third of all U.S. administrations since George Washington took office in 1789 — nine before Carter was president, his own and seven since.

When Carter took office, just one president, John Adams, had lived to be 90. Since then, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Carter and George H.W. Bush have all reached at least 93.

Carter sees US population nearly triple

The U.S. has about 330 million residents, but there were about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. 

Meanwhile, the global population has more than quadrupled, from 1.9 billion to more than 8.1 billion. It already had more than doubled to 4.36 billion by the time he became president.

No internet in 1924

There was no Amazon Prime in 1924, but you could order a build-it-yourself house from a catalog. Sears Roebuck Gladstone’s three-bedroom model went for $2,025, which was slightly less than the average worker’s annual income.

Walmart also didn’t exist, but local general stores served the same purpose. At the time, a loaf of bread cost about 9 cents; a gallon of milk, 54 cents; and a gallon of gas, 11 cents.

Suffragettes to Kamala Harris

The 19th Amendment that extended voting rights to women — almost exclusively White women at the time — was ratified in 1920, four years before Carter's birth. 

The Voting Rights Act that widened the franchise to Black Americans passed in 1965 as Carter was preparing his first bid for Georgia governor.

Now, Carter is poised to cast a mail ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris. She would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office. 

Grandson Jason Carter said the former president is holding on in part because he is excited about the chance to see Harris make history.

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