John F. Kennedy
1917 – 1963 · 46 years · Washington, D.C. · Americas
Reign: 1961 – 1963 (US presidents)
The youngest elected US president. He weathered the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, set the goal of landing a man on the Moon and was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Cecil W. Stoughton · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 43 years older
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 36 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 38 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 28 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 50 years older
- Alan Turing — mathematician, father of computer science, 5 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 39 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 17 years younger
- Anna Akhmatova — poet, 28 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 23 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 11 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 11 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 36 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 19 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 1 year younger
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 19 years older
- Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 15 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 6 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 1 year younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 25 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 8 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 42 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 11 years older
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 8 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 24 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 48 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 28 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 27 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 16 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 16 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 28 years older
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 12 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 13 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 61 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 70 years older
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 33 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 46 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 19 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 2 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 19 years younger
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 17 years older
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 9 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 February Revolution — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 1, Whole world
- 1918 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes — aged 1, Europe
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 2, Europe
- 1920 League of Nations founded — aged 3, Whole world
- 1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 5, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 5, Europe
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 5, Africa
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 6, Asia
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 11, Europe
- 1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 12, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 12, Eastern Europe & Russia
- c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 13, Americas
- 1931 China floods — aged 14, Asia
- 1932–1933 Soviet famine of 1930–1933 — aged 15, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — aged 15, Middle East
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 16, Europe
- 1934–1935 Long March — aged 17, Asia
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — aged 18, Africa
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 19, Europe
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — aged 19, Oceania
- 1936 Turing's universal machine — aged 19, Europe
- 1938 Discovery of nuclear fission — aged 21, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 22, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 24, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 28, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 30, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 31, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 32, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 36, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 36, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 40, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 44, Eastern Europe & Russia