Already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, Jimmy Carter now has reached the century mark.

The 39th president, who remains under home hospice care, turn 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, celebrated in the same south Georgia town where he was born in 1924.

Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his long life.

Booms most everywhere – but not Plains Carter has seen the U.S. population nearly triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents; there were about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. 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.

That boom has not reached Plains, where Carter has lived more than 80 of his 100 years. His wife Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at age 96, also was born in Plains.

Their town comprised fewer than 500 people in the 1920s and has about 700 today; much of the local economy revolves around its most famous residents.

When James Earl Carter Jr. was born, life expectancy for American males was 58. It’s now 75.

TV, radio and presidential maps NBC first debuted a red-and-blue electoral map in the 1976 election between then-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Carter, the Democratic challenger. But NBC’s John Chancellor made Carter’s states red and Ford’s blue. Some other early versions of color electoral maps used yellow and blue because red was associated with Soviet and Chinese communism.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that networks settled on blue for Democratic-won states and red for GOP-won states. “Red state” and “blue state” did not become a permanent part of the American political lexicon until after the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Carter was 14 when Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first presidential television appearance. Warren Harding became the first radio president two years before Carter’s birth.

Attention shoppers

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 didn’t exist, but local general stores served the same purpose. Ballpark prices: loaf of bread, 9 cents; gallon of milk, 54 cents; gallon of gas, 11 cents.

Inflation helped drive Carter from office, as it has dogged President Joe Biden. The average gallon in 1980, Carter’s last full year in office, was about $3.25 when adjusted for inflation. That’s just 3 cents more than AAA’s current national average.

From 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 African 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.

Immigration, isolationism and “America First”

For all the shifts in U.S. politics, some things stay the same. Or at least come back around.

Carter was born in an era of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism – all elements of the right in the ongoing Donald Trump era. In 2024, Trump is promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, while tightening legal immigration. He has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Five months before Carter was born, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The law created the U.S. Border Patrol and sharply curtailed immigration, limiting admission mostly to migrants from western Europe. Asians were banned entirely. Congress described its purpose plainly: “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” The Ku Klux Klan followed in 1925 and 1926 with marches on Washington promoting white supremacy.

Trump also has called for sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, part of his “America First” agenda. In 1922, Congress enacted tariffs intended to help U.S. manufacturers. After stock market losses in 1929, lawmakers added the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, ostensibly to help American farmers. The Great Depression followed anyway. In the 1930s, as Carter became politically aware, the political right that countered FDR was driven in part by a movement that opposed international engagement. Those conservatives’ slogan: “America First.”

America’s and Carter’s pastime 

Carter is the Atlanta Braves’ most famous fan. Jason Carter says the former president still enjoys watching his favorite baseball team.

In the 1990s, when the Braves were annual features in the October playoffs, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were often spotted in the owner’s box with media mogul Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then

Turner’s wife. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee between Carter’s failed run for governor in 1966 and his victory four years later. Then-Gov. Carter was sitting in the first row of Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium on April 9, 1974, when Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s career record.

When Carter was born, the Braves were still in Boston, their original city. Ruth had just completed his fifth season for the New York Yankees. He had hit 284 home runs to that point (still 430 short of his career total) and the original Yankee Stadium – “The House that Ruth Built” – had been open less than 18 months.

Booze, Billy and Billy Beer 

Prohibition had been in effect for four years when Carter was born and wouldn’t be lifted until he was 9. The Carters were never prodigious drinkers. They served only wine at state dinners and other White House functions, though it’s a common misconception that they did so because of their Baptist mores. It was more because Carter has always been frugal: He didn’t want taxpayers or the residence account (his and Rosalynn’s personal money) to cover more expensive hard liquor.