Grigori Rasputin
1869 – 1916 · 47 years · Saint Petersburg · Eastern Europe & Russia
A Siberian peasant reputed to be a healer: he eased the haemophiliac heir Alexei's attacks and so gained sway over the Empress. In 1916 conspirators led by Prince Yusupov killed him; his body was found under the ice of the Nevka.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 2 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 5 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 10 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 12 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 50 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 20 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 1 year younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 41 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 35 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 9 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 29 years older
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 27 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 12 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 27 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 8 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 29 years younger
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 25 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 29 years younger
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 25 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 23 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 29 years older
- Taytu Betul — Empress of Ethiopia, 18 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 6 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 41 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, born the same year
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 24 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 8 years older
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 3 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 32 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 17 years older
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 22 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 13 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 20 years younger
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 22 years older
- Woodrow Wilson — 28th US president, World War I and the League of Nations, 13 years older
- Theodore Roosevelt — 26th US president, the Panama Canal and trust-busting, 11 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 2 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 29 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 31 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 22 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 8 years older
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 13 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 0, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 0, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 1, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 2, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 2, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 5, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 7, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 7, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 7, Middle East
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 — aged 8, Europe
- 1878 Congress of Berlin — aged 9, Europe
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 10, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 10, Africa
- 1882 Britain occupies Egypt — aged 13, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 14, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 15, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 16, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 16, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 16, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 17, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 17, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 19, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 20, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 20, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 22, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 24, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 24, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 25, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 25, Asia
- 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair — aged 25, Europe
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 26, Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 36, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 39, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 45, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 45, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 45, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 46, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 47, Middle East