Lyndon B. Johnson
1908 – 1973 · 65 years · Washington, D.C. · Americas
Reign: 1963 – 1969 (US presidents)
He succeeded the assassinated Kennedy and passed the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Great Society programs, while sharply escalating the Vietnam War.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Arnold Newman · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 27 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 34 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 29 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 19 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 41 years older
- Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 18 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 30 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 26 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 38 years older
- Dmitri Shostakovich — composer, 2 years older
- Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 2 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 14 years older
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 27 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 10 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 10 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 47 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 66 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 10 years older
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 10 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 16 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 17 years younger
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 2 years older
- Kwame Nkrumah — first President of Ghana, 1 year younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 33 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 15 years older
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 39 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 7 years older
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 2 years younger
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 7 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 18 years older
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 19 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 22 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 21 years younger
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 52 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 61 years older
- Jorge Luis Borges — writer, 9 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 37 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 10 years older
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 11 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 28 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, born the same year
- Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 8 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 0, Middle East
- 1908 Tunguska event — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — aged 0, Middle East
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — aged 2, Americas
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — aged 3, Asia
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — aged 3, Oceania
- 1912–1913 Balkan Wars — aged 4, Europe
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — aged 4, Oceania
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — aged 5, Americas
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 6, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 6, Americas
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — aged 6, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 7, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 8, Middle East
- 1916–1918 The Arab Revolt — aged 8, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 9, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 10, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 11, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 20, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 21, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 21, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 25, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 28, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 28, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 31, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 33, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 33, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 37, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 37, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 39, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 40, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 41, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 45, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 45, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 53, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 61, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 62, Americas