Jimmy Carter, the oldest surviving and longest-living U.S. president, set a new record on Tuesday. The big picture: Oct. 1 marks his 100th birthday — making Carter the first president to reach triple digits, and a series of events celebrating the feat are planned in his home state of Georgia.

In 1998, at the ripe age of 74, former President Jimmy Carter put some of his thoughts about getting older to paper. “The virtues of aging,” Carter wrote in a book that year, “include both the blessings that come to us as we grow older and what we have to offer that might be beneficial to others.