Anastas Mikoyan
1895 – 1978 · 83 years · Sanahin · Middle East
As food industry commissar he toured the United States in 1936 for its technology, giving the USSR ketchup and the 'Mikoyan cutlet'. He stayed at the top from Lenin to Brezhnev — 'from Ilyich to Ilyich without heart attack or paralysis'.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 14 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 21 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 16 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 6 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 28 years older
- Bertrand Russell — British philosopher, logician and public intellectual, 23 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 1 year younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 17 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 39 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 25 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 67 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 61 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 14 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 3 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 23 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, born the same year
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 2 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 34 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 23 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 3 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 30 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 51 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 11 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 20 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 2 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 26 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 6 years younger
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 5 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 6 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 6 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 6 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 39 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 35 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 34 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 48 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 4 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 24 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 3 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 24 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 41 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 13 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 5 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 0, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 1, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 2, Africa
- 1898 Battle of Omdurman — aged 3, Africa
- 1899–1902 Second Boer War — aged 4, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 10, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 13, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 19, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 19, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 19, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 20, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 21, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 23, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 24, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 33, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 34, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 38, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 41, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 44, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 46, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 46, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 50, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 50, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 52, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 53, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 54, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 58, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 58, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 62, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 71, Asia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 74, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 75, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 80, Asia