George V
.jpg?width=160 "Bassano Ltd · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons")
1865 – 1936 · 71 years · London · Europe
Reign: 1910 – 1936 (England and Britain)
He reigned through the First World War and in 1917 changed the royal house's German name to Windsor. A first cousin of Nicholas II and Wilhelm II, in 1932 he gave the first royal Christmas broadcast on radio.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Bassano Ltd · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
.jpg){kind=link}
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 2 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 9 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 14 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 16 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 24 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 46 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 13 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 5 years younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 37 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 31 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 25 years older
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 44 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 16 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 4 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 23 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 33 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 53 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 21 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 53 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 21 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 27 years younger
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 60 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 10 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 25 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 4 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 28 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 4 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 1 year younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 28 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 13 years older
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 9 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 18 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 24 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 2 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 9 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 18 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 6 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 33 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 54 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 18 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 4 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 17 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 2, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 3, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 4, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 4, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 5, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 6, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 6, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 9, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 11, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 11, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 11, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 13, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 14, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 14, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 18, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 19, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 20, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 20, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 21, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 24, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 28, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 40, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 43, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 49, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 49, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 50, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 51, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 53, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 54, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 63, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 64, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 68, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 71, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 71, Europe