Alexander Kolchak
1874 – 1920 · 46 years · Alexandrovskoye, near Saint Petersburg · Eastern Europe & Russia
A naval officer and polar explorer, in 1903 he reached Bennett Island by whaleboat in search of Baron Toll's lost expedition. As Supreme Ruler in 1918–1920 he led the White movement; handed over to the Bolsheviks, he was shot in Irkutsk.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 7 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, born the same year
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 5 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 7 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 15 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 55 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 4 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 4 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 46 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 40 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 22 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 34 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 7 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 13 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 32 years older
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 25 years older
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 19 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 21 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 30 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 18 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 34 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 1 year younger
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 23 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 46 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 5 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 19 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 13 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 8 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 5 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 37 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 27 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 18 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 15 years younger
- John D. Rockefeller — industrialist, founder of Standard Oil, 35 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 27 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 18 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 3 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 24 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 27 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 13 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 36 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 8 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 0, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 2, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 2, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 2, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 — aged 3, Europe
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 4, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 5, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 5, Africa
- 1879 Baku oil boom and Branobel — aged 5, Middle East
- 1881 Battle of Geok Tepe — aged 7, Asia
- 1882 Britain occupies Egypt — aged 8, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 9, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 10, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 11, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 11, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 11, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 12, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 12, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 14, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 15, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 15, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 17, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 19, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 19, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 20, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 20, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 20, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 21, Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 31, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 34, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 40, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 40, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 40, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 41, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 42, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 43, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 43, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 44, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 45, Europe