Jean-Bédel Bokassa

President of the CAR, then Emperor of Central Africa

1921 – 1996 · 75 years · Bobangui · Africa

A former captain in the French army, he seized power in the Central African Republic in 1966 and in 1977 crowned himself emperor, modelling the ceremony on Napoleon's. He was overthrown with the help of French troops in 1979.

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

Portrait: Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 40 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 47 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 42 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 32 years older
Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 54 years older
Henry Kissinger — US Secretary of State, 2 years younger

Eastern Europe & Russia

Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 25 years older
Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 13 years younger
Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 43 years older
Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 10 years younger
Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 10 years younger
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 15 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 40 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 23 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 3 years older
Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 26 years older
Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 10 years older
Anastas Mikoyan — Soviet statesman, 26 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 3 years older
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 29 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 4 years younger
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 15 years older
Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 1 year younger
Chinua Achebe — novelist, 9 years younger

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 28 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 52 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 11 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 20 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 4 years older
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 20 years older

Americas

Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 9 years younger
Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 32 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 8 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 65 years older
Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 74 years older
Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 10 years older

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 50 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 2 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 15 years younger
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 23 years older
Don Bradman — cricketer, 13 years older
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 21 years older

The world in their lifetime

1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia — aged 0, Middle East
1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty — aged 0, Europe
1921 New Economic Policy — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 1, Eastern Europe & Russia
1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 1, Europe
1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 1, Africa
1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 2, Asia
1923 Treaty of Lausanne — aged 2, Middle East
1924 National delimitation of Central Asia — aged 3, Asia
1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 7, Europe
1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 8, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 8, Eastern Europe & Russia
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 12, Europe
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 15, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 18, Whole world
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 20, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 24, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 26, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 27, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 28, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 32, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 32, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 45, Asia
1969 Moon landing — aged 48, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 49, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 54, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 59, Whole world
1981 AIDS first described — aged 60, Whole world
1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 62, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 68, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 68, Europe
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 68, Eastern Europe & Russia
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 70, Eastern Europe & Russia