Leon Trotsky
1879 – 1940 · 61 years · Petrograd · Eastern Europe & Russia
A leader of the October Revolution of 1917 and founder of the Red Army. He lost the power struggle to Stalin, was expelled from the USSR in 1929 and was murdered in Mexico by an NKVD agent in 1940.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 5 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, born the same year
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 2 years younger
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 12 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 10 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 60 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 1 year older
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 9 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 51 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 45 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 39 years older
- Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, Nobel laureate, 30 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 2 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 18 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 19 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 37 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 39 years younger
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 19 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 39 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 13 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 35 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 46 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 4 years older
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 39 years older
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 10 years older
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 14 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 18 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 10 years younger
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 11 years younger
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, born the same year
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 23 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 32 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 10 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 50 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 51 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 16 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 8 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 19 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 40 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 3 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 32 years older
- Nellie Melba — operatic soprano, 18 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 0, Americas
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — aged 0, Africa
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 4, Asia
- 1884–1885 Berlin Conference — aged 5, Europe
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 6, Asia
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — aged 6, Africa
- 1885–1908 The Congo Free State — aged 6, Africa
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 7, Europe
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — aged 7, Africa
- 1888 Golden Law abolishes slavery in Brazil — aged 9, Americas
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 10, Europe
- 1889 Van Gogh's The Starry Night — aged 10, Europe
- 1891 Discovery of Java Man — aged 12, Asia
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 14, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 14, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 15, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 15, Asia
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 16, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 17, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 18, Africa
- 1901 First Nobel Prizes — aged 22, Europe
- 1903 Wright brothers' first flight — aged 24, Americas
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 26, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 29, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 35, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 35, Americas
- 1915–1917 Armenian genocide — aged 36, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 37, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 38, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 39, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 40, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 49, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 50, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 50, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 54, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 57, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 57, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 60, Whole world