Edmund Hillary
1919 – 2008 · 89 years · Auckland · Oceania
New Zealander who, with Tenzing Norgay, made the first ascent of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Photographer unidentified. Retouched by TimofKingsland . · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 38 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 45 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 40 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 30 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 52 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 7 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 41 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 15 years younger
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 12 years younger
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 12 years younger
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 13 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 13 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 38 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 21 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 1 year older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 8 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 21 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 17 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 1 year older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 27 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 6 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 13 years older
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 11 years younger
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 3 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 26 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 50 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 9 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 18 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 2 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 18 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 11 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 30 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 10 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 63 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 72 years older
- Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 8 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 48 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 17 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 21 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 11 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 19 years older
- Albert Namatjira — painter, 17 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 0, Europe
- 1920 League of Nations founded — aged 1, Whole world
- 1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 3, Europe
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 3, Africa
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 4, Asia
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 9, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 10, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 11, Americas
- 1931 China floods — aged 12, Asia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 14, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 17, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 20, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 22, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 26, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 28, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 29, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 30, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 34, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 34, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 42, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 50, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 51, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 56, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 61, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 64, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 70, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 70, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 70, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 2001 September 11 attacks — aged 82, Americas
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 85, Asia