Leo Tolstoy
1828 – 1910 · 82 years · Yasnaya Polyana · Eastern Europe & Russia
Author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, one of the greatest novelists in world literature and a moral and religious thinker.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 9 years older
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 10 years older
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 19 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 39 years younger
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 25 years younger
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 46 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 6 years younger
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 7 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 12 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 42 years younger
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 50 years younger
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 21 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 53 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 14 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 33 years younger
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 5 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 70 years younger
- Mahmud II — sultan who destroyed the Janissaries, 43 years older
Africa
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 16 years younger
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 15 years older
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 59 years older
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 64 years younger
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, born the same year
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 12 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 41 years younger
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 65 years younger
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 9 years younger
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 24 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 33 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 38 years younger
Americas
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 19 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 28 years younger
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 19 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 61 years younger
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, 7 years younger
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 19 years younger
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 43 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 70 years younger
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 10 years younger
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 13 years older
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 19 years younger
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 33 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — aged 0, Middle East
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — aged 3, Asia
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — aged 5, Europe
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 7, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 7, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 10, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 11, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 11, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 11, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 11, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 17, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 18, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 18, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 19, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 20, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 20, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 23, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 25, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 25, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 31, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 33, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 33, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 33, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 35, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 36, Americas
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — aged 39, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1867 Canadian Confederation — aged 39, Americas
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — aged 40, Asia
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 41, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 41, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 41, Americas
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 48, Americas
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 51, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 55, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 57, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 58, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 61, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 65, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 77, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 80, Middle East