Mahatma Gandhi
1869 – 1948 · 79 years · Ahmedabad · Asia
Leader of India's independence struggle and pioneer of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha).
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: Elliott & Fry · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 5 years younger
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 10 years younger
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 12 years younger
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 2 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 20 years younger
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 50 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 9 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 1 year younger
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 41 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 35 years older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 29 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 65 years younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 12 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 8 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 29 years younger
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 27 years older
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 49 years younger
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 29 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 49 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 23 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 25 years older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 56 years younger
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 6 years younger
- Yaa Asantewaa — Queen Mother of Ejisu, war leader, 29 years older
Asia
- Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 24 years younger
- Rabindranath Tagore — poet and writer, Nobel laureate, 8 years older
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 20 years younger
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 21 years younger
- Sun Yat-sen — revolutionary, founding father of the ROC, 3 years older
- Emperor Taishō — ailing emperor of the 'Taishō democracy' era, 10 years younger
Americas
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 13 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 22 years older
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 20 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 60 years younger
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 61 years younger
- Henry Ford — industrialist, founder of Ford Motor Company, 6 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 2 years younger
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 29 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 50 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 67 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 13 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 22 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — aged 0, Africa
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — aged 0, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1869 First transcontinental railroad — aged 0, Americas
- 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War — aged 1, Europe
- 1871 Unification of Germany — aged 2, Europe
- 1871 Paris Commune — aged 2, Europe
- 1874 First Impressionist exhibition — aged 5, Europe
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — aged 7, Americas
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India — aged 7, Asia
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — aged 7, Middle East
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — aged 10, Americas
- 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa — aged 14, Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — aged 16, Asia
- 1886 Benz's first automobile — aged 17, Europe
- 1889 Eiffel Tower — aged 20, Europe
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 24, Oceania
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 36, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 39, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 45, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 45, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 46, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 47, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 49, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 50, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 59, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 60, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 64, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 67, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 67, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 70, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 72, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 72, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 73, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 76, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 76, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 78, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 79, Whole world