Charles de Gaulle
1890 – 1970 · 80 years · Lille · Europe
In June 1940 he called on the French from London to fight on and led Free France. In 1958 he founded the Fifth Republic and became its president; he granted Algeria independence and took France out of NATO's military command.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 9 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 16 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 11 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 1 year older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 23 years older
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 71 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 6 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 12 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 20 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 44 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 62 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 56 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 9 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 8 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 28 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 5 years younger
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 3 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 29 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 28 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 2 years younger
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 35 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 46 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 15 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 16 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 3 years younger
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 21 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, born the same year
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 1 year older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 11 years younger
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 11 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 1 year older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 34 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 43 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 40 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 39 years younger
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 6 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 19 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 8 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 29 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 46 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 8 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 10 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 1, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 3, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 3, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 4, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 4, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 4, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 5, Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 15, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 18, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 24, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 24, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 24, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 25, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 26, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 27, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 28, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 29, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 38, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 39, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 39, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 43, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 46, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 46, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 49, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 51, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 55, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 55, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 57, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 58, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 59, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 63, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 63, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 67, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 71, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 76, Asia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 79, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 80, Americas