Fela Kuti
1938 – 1997 · 59 years · Lagos · Africa
A Nigerian musician who fused jazz, funk and Yoruba rhythms into Afrobeat and sang against military rulers, for which he was jailed.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: His master’s voice record company. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 57 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 64 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 59 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 12 years older
- Alan Turing — mathematician, father of computer science, 26 years older
- George VI — Second World War king who overcame a stammer, 43 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 4 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 60 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 7 years older
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 7 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 32 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 32 years older
Middle East
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 40 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 20 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 27 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 40 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 36 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 20 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 46 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 13 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 32 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 16 years older
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 8 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 45 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 69 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 28 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 37 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 21 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 37 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 8 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 49 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 9 years older
- Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 27 years older
- Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 14 years older
- Fidel Castro — leader of Cuba, 12 years older
Oceania
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 19 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 2 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 40 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 30 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 38 years older
- Albert Namatjira — painter, 36 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1938 Discovery of nuclear fission — aged 0, Europe
- 1938 Munich Agreement — aged 0, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 1, Whole world
- 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 3, Europe
- 1941 German invasion of the USSR — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — aged 3, Oceania
- 1941–1942 Battle of Moscow — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — aged 4, Oceania
- 1943 Battle of Kursk — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1944 D-Day: Normandy landings — aged 6, Europe
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 7, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — aged 7, Whole world
- 1945 ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer — aged 7, Americas
- 1945 Indonesia proclaims independence — aged 7, Asia
- 1945 Yalta Conference — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945–1946 Nuremberg trials — aged 7, Europe
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 9, Whole world
- 1947 Independence and Partition of India — aged 9, Asia
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — aged 9, Americas
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 10, Whole world
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — aged 10, Middle East
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 11, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 15, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 15, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 31, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 32, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 37, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 42, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 45, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 47, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 51, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 51, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 51, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 53, Eastern Europe & Russia