Mao Zedong
1893 – 1976 · 83 years · Beijing · Asia
Leader of the Chinese Communist Party who proclaimed the People's Republic in 1949 and led it until 1976.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Portrait: Chen Zhengqing (1917–1966) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 12 years older
- Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 19 years older
- Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 14 years older
- Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 4 years older
- Marie Curie — physicist and chemist, twice Nobel laureate, 26 years older
- George VI — Second World War king who overcame a stammer, 2 years younger
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 15 years older
- Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 41 years younger
- Vladimir Lenin — revolutionary, head of the Soviet government, 23 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 65 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 59 years older
- Nikita Khrushchev — Soviet leader who denounced Stalin's personality cult, 1 year younger
Middle East
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 12 years older
- Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 5 years younger
- Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 25 years younger
- Mehmed VI — last Ottoman sultan, 32 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 51 years older
- Umm Kulthum — singer, 5 years younger
Africa
- Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 25 years younger
- Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 1 year older
- Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, 32 years younger
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 49 years older
- Albert Schweitzer — physician and philosopher, Nobel laureate, 18 years older
- Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 13 years younger
Asia
- Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 24 years older
- Ho Chi Minh — President of North Vietnam, 3 years older
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 8 years younger
- Jawaharlal Nehru — first Prime Minister of India, 4 years older
- Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 8 years younger
- Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 17 years younger
Americas
- Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 4 years older
- Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 37 years older
- Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 37 years younger
- Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 36 years younger
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 46 years older
- Harry S. Truman — 33rd US president, the atomic bombs and the start of the Cold War, 9 years older
Oceania
- Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 22 years older
- Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 5 years younger
- Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 26 years younger
- Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 43 years younger
- Don Bradman — cricketer, 15 years younger
- Douglas Mawson — geologist and Antarctic explorer, 11 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — aged 0, Oceania
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — aged 0, Oceania
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — aged 1, Asia
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium — aged 1, Asia
- 1895 Discovery of X-rays — aged 2, Europe
- 1895 Popov's radio receiver — aged 2, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — aged 3, Asia
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — aged 4, Africa
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — aged 12, Europe
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — aged 15, Middle East
- 1914–1918 World War I — aged 21, Whole world
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — aged 21, Americas
- 1915 Armenian genocide — aged 22, Middle East
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — aged 23, Middle East
- 1917 October Revolution — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — aged 24, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — aged 25, Whole world
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — aged 26, Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 35, Europe
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — aged 36, Americas
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 40, Europe
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 43, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 43, Europe
- 1939–1945 World War II — aged 46, Whole world
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 48, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 48, Europe
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 49, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 52, Asia
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 52, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1947–1991 Cold War — aged 54, Whole world
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 55, Whole world
- 1949 Founding of NATO — aged 56, Whole world
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 60, Europe
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 60, Asia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 68, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1969 Moon landing — aged 76, Americas
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 77, Americas
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 82, Asia