Chulalongkorn (Rama V)
1853 – 1910 · 57 years · Bangkok · Asia
Abolished slavery, carried out Western-style reforms and kept Siam the only Southeast Asian country never colonised.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Bain News Service, publisher. · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 34 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 14 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, born the same year
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 21 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 26 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 35 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 25 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 19 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 13 years older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 17 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 25 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 32 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 28 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 11 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 8 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 45 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 9 years older
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 23 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 9 years older
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 40 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 39 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 13 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 2 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 25 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 16 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 40 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 16 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 1 year older
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 8 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 13 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 6 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 3 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 36 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 44 years older
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 18 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 6 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 18 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 45 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 15 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 6 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 8 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 38 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 0, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 6, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 8, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 8, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 10, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 11, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 14, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 15, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 16, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 16, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 17, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 18, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 18, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 21, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 23, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 23, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 23, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 25, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 26, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 26, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 30, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 31, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 32, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 32, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 32, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 33, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 33, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 35, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 36, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 36, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 38, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 40, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 40, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 52, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 55, Middle East