Gabriel García Márquez
1927 – 2014 · 87 years · Mexico City · Americas
Colombian novelist and master of magical realism, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude; Nobel laureate (1982).
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Gorup de Besanez · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 46 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 53 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 48 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 38 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 1 year older
- Alan Turing — mathematician, father of computer science, 15 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 7 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 49 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 4 years younger
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 4 years younger
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 21 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 21 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 46 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 29 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 9 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 16 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 29 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 25 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 9 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 35 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 2 years older
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 3 years younger
- Miriam Makeba — singer, 5 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 21 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 34 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 58 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 17 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 26 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 10 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 26 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 3 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 38 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 2 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 71 years older
- Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 3 years older
- Fidel Castro — leader of Cuba, 1 year older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 56 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 8 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 9 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 29 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 19 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 27 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 1, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 2, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 3, Americas
- 1931 China floods — aged 4, Asia
- 1932–1933 Soviet famine of 1930–1933 — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — aged 5, Middle East
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 6, Europe
- 1934–1935 Long March — aged 7, Asia
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — aged 8, Africa
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 9, Europe
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — aged 9, Oceania
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 12, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 14, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 18, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 20, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 21, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 22, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 26, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 26, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 30, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 42, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 43, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 48, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 53, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 56, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 58, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 62, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 62, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 62, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 2001 September 11 attacks — aged 74, Americas
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 77, Asia
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — aged 84, Asia