Iosif Grigulevich
1913 – 1988 · 75 years · Vilna (Vilnius) · Eastern Europe & Russia
Posing as the Costa Rican Teodoro Castro, he served as Costa Rica's ambassador to Italy and Yugoslavia and had 15 audiences with Pope Pius XII. He later became a historian of Latin America and a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: 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
- Jean-Paul Sartre — French philosopher and writer, 8 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 17 years older
- 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
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 7 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 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
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 18 years older
- Vladimir Mayakovsky — Futurist poet, 20 years older
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 52 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
- Jean-Bédel Bokassa — President of the CAR, then Emperor of Central Africa, 8 years younger
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 9 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
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 12 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 3 years older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 4 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 12 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 24 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 17 years younger
- 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
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 15 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 23 years younger
- 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
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 1, Europe
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — aged 1, Americas
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 2, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 3, Middle East
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — aged 3, Middle East
- 1916 Battle of the Somme — aged 3, Europe
- 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 — 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
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 53, Asia
- 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
- 1981 AIDS first described — aged 68, Whole world
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 70, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia