Henry Kissinger
1923 – 2023 · 100 years · Fürth · Europe
A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, he ran US foreign policy under Nixon and Ford: détente with the USSR, the opening to China and the Paris accords on Vietnam. They won him the Nobel Peace Prize, which his counterpart Le Duc Tho refused.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 42 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 49 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 44 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 34 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 56 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 3 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 27 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 11 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 45 years older
- Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 8 years younger
- Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 8 years younger
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 17 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 42 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 25 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 5 years older
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 28 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 12 years older
- Anastas Mikoyan — Soviet statesman, 28 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 5 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 31 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 2 years younger
- Chinua Achebe — novelist, 7 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 17 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 1 year older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 30 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 54 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 13 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 22 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 6 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 22 years older
Americas
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 7 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 34 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 6 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 67 years older
- Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 1 year younger
- Fidel Castro — leader of Cuba, 3 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 52 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 4 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 13 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 25 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 15 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 23 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 0, Asia
- 1923 Treaty of Lausanne — aged 0, Middle East
- 1924 National delimitation of Central Asia — aged 1, Asia
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 5, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 6, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 7, Americas
- 1930–1933 Asharshylyk, the Kazakh famine — aged 7, Asia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 10, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 13, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 13, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 16, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 18, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 22, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 22, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 24, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 25, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 26, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 30, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 30, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 43, Asia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 46, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 47, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 52, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 57, Whole world
- 1981 AIDS first described — aged 58, Whole world
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 60, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 62, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 66, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 66, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 68, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 2001 September 11 attacks — aged 78, Americas
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 81, Asia
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — aged 88, Asia