Margaret Thatcher

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1925 – 2013 · 88 years · Grantham · Europe

Britain's first woman prime minister (1979–1990), she privatised state companies, curbed the trade unions and won the Falklands War. The nickname "Iron Lady" was coined by the Soviet army newspaper Red Star.

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century

Portrait: Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

Europe

Pablo Picasso — painter and sculptor, 44 years older
Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 51 years older
Albert Einstein — physicist, creator of relativity, 46 years older
Adolf Hitler — dictator of Nazi Germany, 36 years older
Henry Kissinger — US Secretary of State, 2 years older
Elizabeth II — Britain's longest-reigning monarch, on the throne for 70 years, 1 year younger

Eastern Europe & Russia

Georgy Zhukov — Marshal of the Soviet Union, 29 years older
Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut, first human in space, 9 years younger
Joseph Stalin — leader of the Soviet Union, 47 years older
Mikhail Gorbachev — last leader of the Soviet Union, 6 years younger
Boris Yeltsin — first President of Russia, 6 years younger
Leonid Brezhnev — Soviet leader of the Era of Stagnation, 19 years older

Middle East

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk — founder and first President of Turkey, 44 years older
Golda Meir — Prime Minister of Israel, 27 years older
Gamal Abdel Nasser — President of Egypt, 7 years older
Richard Sorge — Soviet intelligence officer, 30 years older
Naguib Mahfouz — novelist, Nobel laureate, 14 years older
Anastas Mikoyan — Soviet statesman, 30 years older

Africa

Nelson Mandela — first Black President of South Africa, 7 years older
Haile Selassie — Emperor of Ethiopia, 33 years older
Patrice Lumumba — first prime minister of Congo, born the same year
Chinua Achebe — novelist, 5 years younger
Léopold Sédar Senghor — poet, first president of Senegal, 19 years older
Miriam Makeba — singer, 7 years younger

Asia

Mao Zedong — Chairman of the CCP, founder of the PRC, 32 years older
Mahatma Gandhi — leader of the Indian independence movement, 56 years older
Mother Teresa — nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, 15 years older
Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) — WWII-era emperor who announced Japan's surrender, 24 years older
Indira Gandhi — Prime Minister of India, 8 years older
Sukarno — first president of Indonesia, 24 years older

Americas

Neil Armstrong — astronaut, first person on the Moon, 5 years younger
Charlie Chaplin — comic actor and filmmaker, 36 years older
Martin Luther King Jr. — minister and civil rights leader, 4 years younger
Nikola Tesla — inventor and electrical engineer, 69 years older
Jimmy Carter — 39th US president, the Camp David Accords, 1 year older
Fidel Castro — leader of Cuba, 1 year younger

Oceania

Ernest Rutherford — physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus, 54 years older
Edmund Hillary — mountaineer and explorer, 6 years older
Eddie Mabo — land-rights campaigner, 11 years younger
Howard Florey — pharmacologist who made penicillin a drug, 27 years older
Don Bradman — cricketer, 17 years older
Sālote Tupou III — Queen of Tonga, 25 years older

The world in their lifetime

1928 Discovery of penicillin — aged 3, Europe
1928–1932 First Five-Year Plan — aged 3, Eastern Europe & Russia
1929 Wall Street Crash — aged 4, Americas
1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — aged 4, Eastern Europe & Russia
c. 1930–1936 Dust Bowl — aged 5, Americas
1930–1933 Asharshylyk, the Kazakh famine — aged 5, Asia
1931 China floods — aged 6, Asia
1931 Mukden Incident — aged 6, Asia
1932–1933 Holodomor — aged 7, Eastern Europe & Russia
1933 Hitler comes to power — aged 8, Europe
1936–1938 Great Purge — aged 11, Eastern Europe & Russia
1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — aged 11, Europe
1939–1945 World War II — aged 14, Whole world
1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — aged 16, Eastern Europe & Russia
1941–1945 The Holocaust — aged 16, Europe
1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — aged 17, Eastern Europe & Russia
1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — aged 20, Asia
1945 German surrender and Victory Day — aged 20, Eastern Europe & Russia
1947–1991 Cold War — aged 22, Whole world
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — aged 23, Whole world
1949 Founding of NATO — aged 24, Whole world
1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — aged 28, Europe
1953 First ascent of Everest — aged 28, Asia
1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — aged 32, Eastern Europe & Russia
1961 Gagarin's flight — aged 36, Eastern Europe & Russia
1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — aged 41, Asia
1969 Moon landing — aged 44, Americas
c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — aged 45, Americas
1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — aged 50, Asia
1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — aged 55, Whole world
1981 AIDS first described — aged 56, Whole world
1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — aged 58, Americas
1985–1991 Perestroika — aged 60, Eastern Europe & Russia
1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — aged 64, Europe
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — aged 64, Europe
1989 Revolutions of 1989 — aged 64, Eastern Europe & Russia
1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — aged 66, Eastern Europe & Russia
2001 September 11 attacks — aged 76, Americas
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — aged 79, Asia
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — aged 86, Asia