John D. Rockefeller
1839 – 1937 · 98 years · Richford · Americas
He founded Standard Oil, which by 1900 controlled about 90% of US oil refining; in 1911 a court broke it into 34 companies. One of the richest people in history, he founded the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 28 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 35 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 20 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 40 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 42 years younger
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 50 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 11 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 5 years older
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 39 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 31 years younger
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 1 year younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 18 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 42 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 3 years younger
- Sergei Witte — finance minister, first chairman of the Council of Ministers, 10 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 22 years younger
- Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 56 years younger
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 59 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 79 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 5 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 53 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 26 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 86 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 70 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 30 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 54 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 22 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 2 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 13 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 27 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 8 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 17 years younger
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 50 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 30 years older
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 8 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 24 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 32 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 59 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 80 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 8 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 1 year older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 22 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 0, Asia
- 1839 The daguerreotype — aged 0, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 0, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 0, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 6, Europe
- 1846 First surgery under ether — aged 7, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 7, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 8, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 9, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 9, Europe
- 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion — aged 11, Asia
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 12, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 14, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1856–1860 Second Opium War — aged 17, Asia
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 22, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 37, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 40, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 44, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 46, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 47, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 50, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 54, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 66, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 69, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 75, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 75, Americas
- 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand — aged 75, Europe
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 76, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 77, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 78, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 78, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 79, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 80, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 89, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 90, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 90, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 94, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 97, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 97, Europe