Jess Hardiman
While many of us sadly won't find ourselves going down in history for anything particularly notable, one baby managed to break a world record by just being born.
Yep, all he had to do was just lie there and exist, and rack up all that glory.
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born on Saturday (26 July) to parents Lindsey, 35, and Tim Pierce, 34, who live in Ohio, US.
So far, it all seems relatively normal, right?
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But it turns out that little Thaddeus is actually the ‘oldest baby’ to ever be born, which naturally gives him a fair bit of kudos.
On top of the baby being the world’s oldest, the youngster also has a 30-year-old sister, which is quite the age gap.
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Mum Lindsey told MIT Technology Review that her family thought the birth of the little one was like ‘like something from a sci-fi movie’.
“We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records,” Lindsey told the publication. “We just wanted to have a baby.”
The reason why everyone’s so thrilled is because Thaddeus was born from an embryo that was frozen for more than 30 years, which had been stored for three decades before being transferred into Lindsey’s uterus in November 2024.
In turn, he broke the record for the longest an embryo has been frozen before resulting in a successful live birth.
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The embryo itself came from Linda Archerd, 62, who had made it with her then-husband in 1994 through IVF, creating four at the time – one of which became her now-30-year-old daughter, while the others were donated after she split from her other half.
Thaddeus may be the oldest, but he’s not the only one to have been born from a decades-old embryo.
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In November 2022, twins Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from an embryo from April 1992, making them record breakers.
"I was five years old when God gave life to Lydia and Timothy, and he's been preserving that life ever since," dad Philip told CNN at the time.
"In a sense, they're our oldest children, even though they're our smallest children."
He added: "There is something mind-boggling about it."
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Before the twins, Molly Gibson was the proud owner of the title, having been born in 2020 from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 27 years.
Weighing 6lbs 13oz, Molly was born to parents Tina and Ben Gibson - who, strangely, had been in the news before for a similarly heartwarming story.
You see, Molly had actually broken the record previously set by her sister Emma, who made history in on 25 November 2017 when she was born from an embryo created back in 1992 – making it around 25 years old.
“My husband has cystic fibrosis, so infertility is common,” Tina previously explained to CNN, adding that they had found peace with it.
“We had decided that we were more than likely going to adopt, and we were fine with that.”
And they did adopt, in a sense, ultimately choosing to take on a set of embryos created for IVF by another anonymous couple.
"I just came home one day; I looked at Benjamin, and I said, 'I think we need to submit an application for embryo adoption',” Tina said. “On a whim, we filled out an application and submitted that night.”
While the process involved them looking through profiles to find the embryos, the couple said they had no idea they were entering record-breaking territory with theirs.
It was only when they were 'fixing to go for the transfer' that someone explained it could be a 'world record', with Tina laughing: “I didn’t sign up for this!"