Edgar Allan Poe
1809 – 1849 · 40 years · Boston · Americas
A pioneer of detective fiction (The Murders in the Rue Morgue), master of the Gothic tale and author of The Raven. He died at 40 after being found delirious in a Baltimore street in someone else's clothes; the cause is still unknown.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, born the same year
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 9 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 10 years younger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 60 years older
- Ludwig van Beethoven — German composer, 39 years older
- Napoleon Bonaparte — Emperor of the French, 40 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 10 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 12 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 19 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 25 years younger
- Nicholas I — emperor who crushed the Decembrist revolt, 13 years older
- Alexander II of Russia — Emperor of Russia, 9 years younger
Middle East
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 24 years older
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 14 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 21 years younger
Africa
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 40 years older
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 4 years younger
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 22 years older
- Ranavalona I — Queen of Madagascar, 31 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 23 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 19 years younger
Asia
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 49 years older
- Tokugawa Ienari — longest-serving shogun, for half a century, 36 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 28 years younger
- Tokugawa Ieyoshi — shogun who died soon after the Black Ships arrived, 16 years older
- Tokugawa Iesada — shogun under whom Japan opened its ports to the West, 15 years younger
- Empress Dowager Cixi — Empress Dowager of China, 26 years younger
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, born the same year
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 26 years older
- José de San Martín — liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru, 31 years older
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 3 years older
- Andrew Jackson — 7th US president, the Trail of Tears and the Jacksonian era, 42 years older
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 13 years younger
Oceania
- Kamehameha I — first King of Hawaii, 51 years older
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 3 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 6 years younger
- Hongi Hika — Ngāpuhi Māori chief, 37 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 29 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — aged 1, Americas
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812 Battle of Borodino — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812–1815 War of 1812 — aged 3, Americas
- 1813 Battle of Leipzig — aged 4, Europe
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — aged 5, Europe
- 1814 Napoleon abdicates — aged 5, Europe
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 6, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 6, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 7, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 8, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 8, Americas
- 1817–1864 Start of the Caucasian War — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 10, Asia
- 1821–1829 Greek War of Independence — aged 12, Europe
- 1821 Mexican independence — aged 12, Americas
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 13, Americas
- 1823 Monroe Doctrine — aged 14, Americas
- 1824 Battle of Ayacucho — aged 15, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 19, Middle East
- 1830 July Revolution — aged 21, Europe
- 1830 Belgian Revolution — aged 21, Europe
- 1830 France invades Algiers — aged 21, Africa
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 22, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 24, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 26, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 26, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 29, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 30, Asia
- 1839 The daguerreotype — aged 30, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 30, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 30, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 36, Europe
- 1846 First surgery under ether — aged 37, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 37, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 38, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 39, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 39, Europe