Gerald Ford

David Hume Kennerly · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

38th US president, the pardon of Nixon

1913 – 2006 · 93 years · Washington, D.C. · Americas

Reign: 1974 – 1977 (US presidents)

The only president never elected as either president or vice president, appointed vice president and elevated by Nixon's resignation. He pardoned Nixon and signed the Helsinki Final Act (1975).

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century

Portrait: David Hume Kennerly · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 32 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 39 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 34 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 24 years older
Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 46 years older
Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 13 years younger

Eastern Europe & Russia

Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 35 years older
Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 21 years younger
Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 43 years older
Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 18 years younger
Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 18 years younger
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 7 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 32 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 15 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 5 years younger
Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 52 years older
Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 2 years older
Umm Kulthum — singer, 15 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 5 years younger
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 21 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 12 years younger
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 7 years older
Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 9 years younger
Chinua Achebe — novelist, 17 years younger

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 20 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 44 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 3 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 12 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 4 years younger
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 12 years older

Americas

Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 17 years younger
Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 24 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 16 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 57 years older
Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 66 years older
Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 2 years older

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 42 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 6 years younger
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 23 years younger
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 15 years older
Don Bradman — cricketer, 5 years older
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 13 years older

The world in their lifetime

1913 Ford's moving assembly line — aged 0, Americas
1914–1918 World War I — aged 1, Whole world
1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 1, Americas
1915 Armenian genocide — aged 2, Middle East
1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 3, Middle East
1917 October Revolution — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 5, Whole world
1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 6, Europe
1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 15, Europe
1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 16, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 20, Europe
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 23, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 26, Whole world
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 28, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 29, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 32, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 34, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 35, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 36, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 40, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 40, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia
1969 Moon landing — aged 56, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 57, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 62, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 67, Whole world
1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 70, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 76, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 76, Europe
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 76, Eastern Europe & Russia
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 78, Eastern Europe & Russia
2001 September 11 attacks — aged 88, Americas
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 91, Asia