Eddie Mabo
1936 – 1992 · 56 years · Mer Island, Torres Strait · Oceania
A Torres Strait Islander whose case led the High Court in 1992 to recognise that Australia had not been 'no one's land' before the British.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 55 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 62 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 57 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 10 years older
- Alan Turing — mathematician, father of computer science, 24 years older
- George VI — Second World War king who overcame a stammer, 41 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 2 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 58 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 5 years older
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 5 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 30 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 30 years older
Middle East
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 38 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 18 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 25 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 38 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 34 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 18 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 44 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 11 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 30 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 14 years older
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 6 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 43 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 67 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 26 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 35 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 19 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 35 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 6 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 47 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 7 years older
- Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 25 years older
- Richard Nixon — 37th US president, the opening to China and Watergate, 23 years older
- Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 12 years older
Oceania
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 17 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 38 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 28 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 36 years older
- Albert Namatjira — painter, 34 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 54 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 0, Europe
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — aged 0, Oceania
- 1936 Turing's universal machine — aged 0, Europe
- 1938 Discovery of nuclear fission — aged 2, Europe
- 1938 Munich Agreement — aged 2, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 3, Whole world
- 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 5, Europe
- 1941 German invasion of the USSR — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — aged 5, Oceania
- 1941–1942 Battle of Moscow — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — aged 6, Oceania
- 1943 Battle of Kursk — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1944 D-Day: Normandy landings — aged 8, Europe
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 9, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — aged 9, Whole world
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — aged 9, Americas
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — aged 9, Asia
- 1945 Yalta Conference — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 11, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 12, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 13, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 17, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 17, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 33, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 34, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 39, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 44, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 47, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 53, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 53, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 53, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 55, Eastern Europe & Russia