Franklin Pierce
1804 – 1869 · 65 years · Washington, D.C. · Americas
Reign: 1853 – 1857 (US presidents)
He signed the Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854), which left slavery to settlers' vote and led to "Bleeding Kansas". He bought southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico (the Gadsden Purchase, 1853).
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Mathew Benjamin Brady · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 5 years younger
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 14 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 15 years younger
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 55 years older
- Ludwig van Beethoven — German composer, 34 years older
- Napoleon Bonaparte — Emperor of the French, 35 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 17 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 24 years younger
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 30 years younger
- Alexander Pushkin — Russian poet, 5 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 36 years younger
- Nicholas I — emperor who crushed the Decembrist revolt, 8 years older
Middle East
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 19 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 19 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 38 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 26 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 40 years younger
Africa
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 9 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 35 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 40 years younger
- Shaka — King of the Zulu, 17 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 18 years older
- Ranavalona I — Queen of Madagascar, 26 years older
Asia
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 44 years older
- Tokugawa Ienari — longest-serving shogun, for half a century, 31 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 33 years younger
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 48 years younger
- Tokugawa Ieyoshi — shogun who died just after the Black Ships arrived, 11 years older
- Tokugawa Iesada — shogun under whom Japan opened its ports to the West, 20 years younger
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 5 years younger
- Simón Bolívar — liberator of South America, 21 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 43 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 52 years younger
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 2 years younger
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 18 years younger
Oceania
- Kamehameha I — first King of Hawaii, 46 years older
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 8 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 11 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 34 years younger
- Hongi Hika — Ngāpuhi Māori chief, 32 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 43 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1804 Coronation of Napoleon — aged 0, Europe
- 1804–1813 First Serbian Uprising — aged 0, Europe
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — aged 0, Africa
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — aged 1, Africa
- 1805 Battle of Trafalgar — aged 1, Europe
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — aged 6, Americas
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — aged 10, Europe
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — aged 11, Asia
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — aged 11, Europe
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — aged 12, Europe
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — aged 13, Asia
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — aged 13, Americas
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — aged 15, Asia
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — aged 18, Americas
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 24, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 27, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 29, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 31, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 31, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 34, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 35, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 35, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 35, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 35, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 41, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 42, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 42, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 43, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 44, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 44, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 47, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 49, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 55, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 57, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 57, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 57, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 59, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 60, Americas