Julius Nyerere

Rob Mieremet / Anefo · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

first president of Tanzania

1922 – 1999 · 77 years · Dar es Salaam · Africa

'Mwalimu', the teacher, led Tanganyika to independence, united it with Zanzibar and made Swahili the nation's common language.

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

Portrait: Rob Mieremet / Anefo · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 41 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 48 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 43 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 33 years older
Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 55 years older
Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 4 years younger

Eastern Europe & Russia

Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 12 years younger
Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 44 years older
Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 9 years younger
Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 9 years younger
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 16 years older
Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 16 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 41 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 24 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 4 years older
Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 11 years older
Umm Kulthum — singer, 24 years older
Nâzım Hikmet — poet, 20 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 4 years older
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 30 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 3 years younger
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 16 years older
Chinua Achebe — novelist, 8 years younger
Miriam Makeba — singer, 10 years younger

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 29 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 53 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 12 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 21 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 5 years older
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 21 years older

Americas

Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 8 years younger
Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 33 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 7 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 66 years older
Ronald Reagan — 40th US president, "Reaganomics" and the end of the Cold War, 11 years older
Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 2 years younger

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 51 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 3 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 14 years younger
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 24 years older
Don Bradman — cricketer, 14 years older
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 22 years older

The world in their lifetime

1922 Formation of the USSR — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
1922 March on Rome: Mussolini takes power — aged 0, Europe
1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — aged 0, Africa
1923 Great Kantō earthquake — aged 1, Asia
1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 6, Europe
1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan: Soviet industrialisation — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 7, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 8, Americas
1931 China floods — aged 9, Asia
1932–1933 Soviet famine of 1930–1933 — aged 10, Eastern Europe & Russia
1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — aged 10, Middle East
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 11, Europe
1934–1935 Long March — aged 12, Asia
1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — aged 13, Africa
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 14, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 14, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 17, Whole world
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 19, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 19, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 23, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 23, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 25, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 26, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 27, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 31, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 31, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 35, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 39, Eastern Europe & Russia
1969 Moon landing — aged 47, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 48, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 53, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 58, Whole world
1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 61, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 63, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 67, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 67, Europe
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 67, Eastern Europe & Russia
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 69, Eastern Europe & Russia