Health
Birthday buddies and next-door neighbors turn 101 on same day
Imagine living next door to a neighbor who is exactly your age and who shares the very same birthday.
Josie Church and Anne Wallace-Hadrill know all about this. They also know about longevity — and a lot of luck.
The two women have lived side-by-side since the 1980s.
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The great-grandmothers were also born on the same day in 1924 — April 1 — according to news agency SWNS.
Said Josie Church, “I think life has gone quite quickly.”
Anne Wallace-Hadrill (left) and Josie Church are pictured outside their homes in Oxford, Oxfordshire, on March 26, 2025. (SWNS)
She added of her neighbor in Oxford, in the U.K., “Anne was very busy when she was younger — so was I — and was very productive and creative. She did a lot of painting and tapestry, and she was always busy, and I was always busy doing something else, somewhere else, because that’s the sort of life we live.”
She also said, “I don’t think we’ve thought much about the time passing. It’s just passed.”
“I don’t think we’ve thought much about the time passing. It’s just passed.”
Both women were very involved in volunteering and creative activities after their husbands died, said the same news source.
Church’s husband, Peter, passed away in the 1990s and the women formed a friendship.
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Wallace-Hadrill, who grew up in Hampshire, first moved to the house following the death of her husband, John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, a historian.
She taught English at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University, and served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service as a radio mechanic during World War II.
While St. Hilda’s was an all-female college at the time, Wallace-Hadrill said, “We weren’t forbidden from seeing men. We were expected to live decent lives.”
Next-door neighbors Anne Wallace-Hadrill (left) and Josie Church will celebrate their shared 101st birthday on April 1. (SWNS)
She said she enjoyed being at the university, adding that it was both “a lot of fun and a lot of work,” said SWNS.
After graduating, Wallace-Hadrill worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. “I was always interested in words,” she said. “It was my trade.”
She was quite proud, she said, to receive a medal for her service from the Royal Navy last year; it was described as “long overdue” by the representative who gave it to her.
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Originally from Manchester, Church did her training at Preston Royal Infirmary and remembers the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS). She said the training was “three years of hard work.”
Said Church, “In those days, you had to live in, and you couldn’t get married, and it was very strict. People wouldn’t put up with that sort of life now.”
Her time in nursing during World War II included a “chilling” experience of caring for SS German soldiers. “They weren’t very nice,” Church said. “They didn’t wish to be taken care of by us. They were very difficult patients.”
Josie Church (left) and Anne Wallace-Hadrill have lived side-by-side in Oxford since the 1980s. “You just go on from one thing to another,” Church said. (SWNS)
She moved with her husband to Oxford so he could continue his degree at University College — which was interrupted by the war — and they “lived the life of an undergraduate.”
Half of the undergraduates had been to war, she said, while the other half were young students who were just matriculating.
“Oxford was very strange because each college had a large intake of older people who’d gone through the war and were taking up their university places,” said Church. “So you’d get the old men and then the young 18-year-olds coming in from school.”
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After marrying, Church worked for a while and looked after her family. Her husband was a housemaster at a boys’ boarding school and she was the house nurse — so she had an “interesting” few years looking after 120 boys.
She has three “wonderful” children, she shared: Chris, Pamela and Andrew.
Meanwhile, Wallace-Hadrill’s son James lives in Poole and her son Andrew in Cambridge.
“It was wonderful. We had a lovely day,” said one of the women about a birthday party thrown for them by their neighbors. (iStock)
The two women said they don’t remember the moment they discovered they share the same birthday — but they enjoyed the celebrations arranged for them last year, SWNS reported.
“We live on the most amazing road. It’s like one big, extended family,” said Church. “Everybody knows everybody else. If you have a problem, you just give a shout and somebody will come.”
“It was wonderful. We had a lovely day last year,” she said, referencing the women’s 100th birthday celebration. “It was quite unexpected because I didn’t know anything about it. It’s just an amazing street. I think we are lucky.”
“We live on the most amazing road. It’s like one big, extended family.”
As for tips about leading a long life: “Just live,” advised Church. “There’s not much you can do. You just go on from one thing to the next.”
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She added, “You do what seems to need doing, and then you do that, and then something else takes its place. You just go on from one thing to another.”
She also said, “We don’t engineer our lives. I think they’ve just engineered us.”
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An accidental lab discovery has opened the door to entirely new ways of preventing the flu.
While investigating how influenza replicates, researchers discovered that different flu strains use completely different strategies to infiltrate human cells, SWNS reported.
By targeting the specific molecules the viruses rely on, scientists found that they could block them from entering new cells and halt their replication altogether.
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Researchers say these “fundamental insights” into seasonal influenza highlight a clear path toward developing better preventive medications.
“The hope is that fundamental, curiosity-based research like this helps to pave the way for novel strategies to treat and prevent influenza infections,” principal investigator Dr. Emily Bruce, from the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, said in the SWNS report.
While investigating how influenza replicates, researchers discovered that different flu strains use completely different strategies to infiltrate human cells. (iStock)
While several flu strains cause illness, H1N1 and H3N2 influenza A viruses are the most common. However, current flu tests cannot differentiate between them, and clinical treatments are identical for both.
Although vaccines and antivirals are available, Bruce noted a “dire” need for better medications to stop the virus from spreading cell to xxcell.
“You don’t get sick when a virus is in one cell,” he noted. “You get sick because a virus replicates itself and goes into many more cells.”
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The study, which was published in The Journal of Virology, originally aimed to map how viral RNA segments are transported within cells to create new viral particles.
The team used H1N1 and H3N2 viruses isolated from the nasal passages of positive patients in 2022.
Clinical treatments remain identical for both primary strains of the flu virus. (iStock)
During the investigation, the team unexpectedly stumbled upon a cellular pathway that blocked the virus from entering lung cells, SWNS reported.
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The data revealed that when a specific human protein called Rab11B was depleted, H3N2 viruses failed to enter human lung cells. H1N1 viruses were completely unaffected.
Using reverse genetics, the team mapped this defect and uncovered a brand-new, H3N2-specific role for Rab11B during viral entry.
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This discovery challenged the scientific assumption that all flu viruses enter cells the same way.
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“Viruses are like pirates from different countries hijacking someone’s ship,” Bruce said. “Different viruses, like different types of pirates, use different methods to get onboard.”
This discovery challenged the scientific assumption that all flu viruses enter cells the same way. (iStock)
“We had previously thought that all flu viruses used the same way to get into a cell, but we discovered that this is not true,” she went on. “H1N1 and H3N2 need different proteins to get in, and if you get rid of the right protein, a specific virus can’t get in.”
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While these findings identify a critical cellular pathway for viral entry, the study was conducted using isolated cells, the researchers acknowledged.
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Further research is needed to determine whether blocking the protein is safe and effective within a live, complex human respiratory system.
Bruce and the team hope to conduct further research to determine whether this Rab11B-dependency is a fundamental property of H3N2, or if it’s a trait unique to currently circulating flu strains.
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Eating processed meat like ham, sausage and bacon may be linked to a higher risk of certain types of cancer, according to new research.
While health organizations have already confirmed that processed meat can contribute to colon cancer, this study looked closer at cancers in the upper digestive tract, where the link has historically been less clear.
To understand these connections, researchers from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), one of the world’s largest long-term nutrition and cancer cohorts, tracked the health and diets of 450,112 people across Europe for an average of 14 years.
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The study group included 131,426 men and 318,686 women, according to the study’s press release.
During the follow-up period, 876 people developed stomach cancer and 215 people developed esophageal adenocarcinoma, which is cancer of the tube connecting the mouth to the stomach.
For female participants, eating both processed meat and white meat was linked to an increased risk of developing the disease. (iStock)
Researchers tracked where the stomach cancers grew, separating them into the upper part of the stomach near the throat and the lower part of the stomach.
The researchers also sorted the tumors into two categories based on how the cancer cells appeared under a microscope: intestinal, which forms more organized structures, and diffuse, in which the cells are more scattered throughout the tissue.
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After adjusting for other lifestyle factors, the researchers found that for every extra 30 grams of processed meat a person ate per day, their overall risk of stomach cancer went up by 9%. Eating that same extra 30 grams a day was also linked to a 13% higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma.
A standard single slice of regular deli-sliced ham or lunch meat averages around 28 grams, according to USDA data and nutritional tracking databases.
An extra 20 grams of white meat, such as chicken and turkey, was linked to a 12% higher risk of cancer in the main body of the stomach. (iStock)
An extra 20 grams of white meat, such as chicken or turkey, was linked to a 12% higher risk of cancer in the main body of the stomach, the researchers noted.
The study also revealed differences between men and women. For male participants, only processed meat showed a clear, statistically significant link to a higher risk of stomach cancer. For female participants, however, eating both processed meat and white meat was linked to an increased risk.
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These findings align with global health benchmarks, particularly those established by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The agency has long classified processed meat as a known human carcinogen, primarily due to its strong, well-documented links to colorectal cancer.
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However, health organizations have also consistently pointed to a potential, yet less definitive, relationship between these meats and cancers of the stomach.
Eating 30 grams of processed meat a day, or the equivalent to one slice of ham, was linked to a 13% higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma. (iStock)
Further scientific investigation is needed to confirm the findings and to account for other underlying risk factors, such as certain stomach infections, which could interact with dietary habits.
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A key limitation of the study is its reliance on self-reported diets, which can sometimes lead to inaccuracies in how participants recall their meat consumption over time, the researchers noted.
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The findings were published in the International Journal of Cancer.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers requesting comment.
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