David Livingstone
1813 – 1873 · 60 years · Victoria Falls · Africa
Scottish missionary who crossed Africa coast to coast and was the first European to see Victoria Falls.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Thomas Annan / Adam Cuerden · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 4 years older
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 5 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 6 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 40 years younger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 64 years older
- Ludwig van Beethoven — German composer, 43 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 8 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 15 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 21 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 27 years younger
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 14 years older
- Alexander II of Russia — Emperor of Russia, 5 years younger
Middle East
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 10 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 29 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 28 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 48 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 17 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 31 years younger
Africa
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 44 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 31 years younger
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 26 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 27 years older
- Ranavalona I — Queen of Madagascar, 35 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 15 years younger
Asia
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 53 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 24 years younger
- Tokugawa Ienari — longest-serving shogun, for half a century, 40 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 39 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 48 years younger
- Tokugawa Ieyoshi — shogun who died just after the Black Ships arrived, 20 years older
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 4 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 34 years younger
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 30 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 43 years younger
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 7 years older
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 9 years younger
Oceania
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 1 year older
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 2 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 25 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 34 years younger
- Ned Kelly — bushranger and Australian folk hero, 41 years younger
- Hongi Hika — Ngāpuhi Māori chief, 41 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — aged 1, Europe
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 2, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 2, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 3, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 4, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 4, Americas
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 6, Asia
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 9, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 15, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 18, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 20, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 22, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 22, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 25, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 26, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 26, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 26, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 26, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 32, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 33, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 33, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 34, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 35, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 35, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 38, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 40, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 46, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 48, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 48, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 50, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 51, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 54, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 54, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 55, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 56, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 56, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 57, Europe