Konstantin Chernenko
1911 – 1985 · 74 years · Moscow · Eastern Europe & Russia
Reign: 1984 – 1985 (Rus and Russia)
A Brezhnev loyalist chosen as General Secretary while already gravely ill. During his thirteen months in office the USSR boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics; his death opened the way for Gorbachev.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Associated Press · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 30 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 37 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 32 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 22 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 44 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 15 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 33 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 23 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 41 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 5 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 5 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 17 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 30 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 13 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 7 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 50 years older
- Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, born the same year
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 13 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 7 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 19 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 14 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 5 years older
- Julius Nyerere — first president of Tanzania, 11 years younger
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 2 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 18 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 42 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 10 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 1 year older
- Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 6 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 10 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 22 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 19 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 18 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 55 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 64 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 12 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 40 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 8 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 13 years older
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 25 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 3 years older
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 11 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 0, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 0, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 1, Europe
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — aged 1, Oceania
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — aged 2, Americas
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 3, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 3, Americas
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — aged 3, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 4, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 5, Middle East
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — aged 5, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 6, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 7, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 8, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 17, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 18, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 22, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 25, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 28, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 30, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 30, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 31, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 34, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 36, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 37, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 38, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 42, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 42, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 46, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 50, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 58, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 59, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 64, Asia
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 69, Whole world
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 72, Americas
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 74, Eastern Europe & Russia