Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa)
1901 – 1989 · 88 years · Tokyo · Asia
Reign: 1926 – 1989 (Japan: shoguns & emperors)
Reigned 1926–1989, longer than any Japanese monarch with reliable dates. Japan fought in China and the Pacific under him; on 15 August 1945 he announced the surrender by radio, and in 1946 he renounced his divinity to become a symbol of the state.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 20 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 27 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 22 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 12 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 34 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 25 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 23 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 33 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 31 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 5 years younger
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 7 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 5 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 20 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 3 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 17 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 40 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 59 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 10 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 17 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 9 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 24 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 57 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 5 years younger
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 21 years younger
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 8 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 32 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 9 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, born the same year
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 11 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 16 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 12 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 29 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 45 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 28 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 54 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 2 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 30 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 18 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 3 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 35 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 7 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 1 year older
The world in their lifetime
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 0, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 2, Americas
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 4, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 7, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 13, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 13, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 14, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 15, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 17, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 18, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 27, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 28, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 32, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 35, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 38, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 40, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 44, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 46, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 47, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 48, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 52, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 52, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 56, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 68, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 69, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 74, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 79, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 82, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 84, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 88, Europe
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 88, Europe
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 88, Eastern Europe & Russia