Edward VI
1537 – 1553 · 16 years · London · Europe
Reign: 1547 – 1553 (England and Britain)
Henry VIII's only legitimate son, crowned at nine. Under him England turned Protestant, adopting the English Book of Common Prayer. He died at 15 after trying to leave the throne to Lady Jane Grey.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 16th century
Portrait: Attributed to William Scrots (active 1537-1553) [1] · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Michelangelo — sculptor, painter and architect, 62 years older
- Elizabeth I — Queen of England, 4 years older
- Charles V — ruler of an empire "on which the sun never sets", 37 years older
- John Calvin — Protestant reformer, 28 years older
- Mary I — 'Bloody Mary', who returned England to Catholicism, 21 years older
- Henry II — king mortally wounded in a jousting tournament, 18 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Ivan the Terrible — first Tsar of Russia, 7 years older
- Yermak Timofeyevich — Cossack conqueror of Siberia, 5 years older
Middle East
- Suleiman the Magnificent — Ottoman sultan, 43 years older
- Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana) — wife of Sultan Suleiman I, 32 years older
- Selim II — sultan who took Cyprus and lost at Lepanto, 13 years older
- Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf — Ottoman astronomer and engineer, 11 years older
Asia
- Akbar the Great — Mughal emperor, 5 years younger
- Tokugawa Ieyasu — first Tokugawa shogun, 6 years younger
- Oda Nobunaga — Japanese warlord, 3 years older
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi — unifier of Japan, born the same year
- Ashikaga Yoshiaki — last Ashikaga shogun, expelled by Nobunaga, born the same year
- Li Shizhen — Chinese physician and pharmacologist, 19 years older
Americas
- Bartolomé de las Casas — friar and defender of Native Americans, 53 years older
- Hernán Cortés — conquistador, 52 years older
- Inca Garcilaso de la Vega — chronicler, son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, 2 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1542 Orellana sails down the Amazon — aged 5, Americas
- 1543 Copernicus publishes heliocentrism — aged 6, Europe
- 1545–1548 Cocoliztli epidemic — aged 8, Americas
- 1547 Ivan IV crowned Tsar — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia